
Faith and Freedom. 




BOSTON : 
Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. 
1881. 



Press of Geo, IT. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street, Boston. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Introduction, v-xxiii 

ii. Faith, ; 1 

in. God is Spirit. L, 15 

it. God is Spirit. II., 30 

v. The Childhood of God, . 45 

vi. The Light of God in Man, 59 

vii. The Grace of Jesus Christ, 74 

viii. The Intellectual Deyelop3ient of Christ, . . 89 

ix. The Fitness of Christianity for Mankind. I., . 102 

x. The Fitness of Christianity for Mankind. IT.,. 117 

xi. The Changed Aspect of* 'Christian Theology, . 130 

xii. Biblical Criticism, 14S 

xiii. The Atonement, . . . . ". 166 

xiv. Devotion to the Conventional, 1S5 

xv. The Religion of Signs, 200 

xvi. The Naturalness of God's Judgments, .... 214 

" xvn. Liberty, 227 

xviii. The India-ideal Soul and God, 244 

xix. Lmmortality. I., 258 

xx. Immortality. II., 272 

xxi. Immortality. III., 290 

xxn. Immortality. IV., 308 



XXIII. 



XXIV. 



Letter to the Congregation of Bedford Chapel, 327 
Salt "without Savor, 331 



INTRODUCTION. 



Stopford Brooke * is the greatest preacher that the Church 
of England has had since Robertson of Brighton ; and his with- 
drawal from the Church is, in many respects, the most signifi- 
cant recent occurrence in the English religious world. The 
deep interest which his new movement has awakened in Amer- 
ica, where, both as a religious thinker and a man of letters, he 
has almost as many admirers as in England itself, has induced 
the publisher to present this collection of his sermons, selected 
chiefly from his later volumes, with a view to exhibit his gen- 
eral doctrinal position and the prominent characteristics of his 
preaching. His recent withdrawal from the Church and 
assumption of an independent position are not to be regarded 
as involving any very recent radical change in these. His teach- 

* Stopford Augustus Brooke was born at Dublin in 1832, and was educated at 
Trinity College, Dublin, where he gained the Downe prize and the Vice-Chan- 
cellor's prize for English verse. He graduated B.A. in 1856, and M.A. in 1858. 
He was curate of St. Matthew's Marylebone, 1857-59 ; curate of Kensington, 1860 
-63 ; chaplain to the British Embassy at Berlin, 1863-65 ; minister of St. James' 
Chapel, 1866-75 ; and became minister of Bedford Chapel in June, 1S76. He 
was appointed a chaplain in ordinary to the Queen in 1872. Mr. Brooke's pub- 
lished works are as follows : Life and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson ; Ser- 
mons, First and Second Series ; Freedom in the Church of England; Christ in 
Mudem Life; The Fight of Faith; Theology in the English Poets; A Primer of 
English Literature; The Life and Works of Milton; and the Life and Work of 
Maurice, a Memorial Sermon. 

The dates of the several sermons in this volume have been given, as afford- 
ing some sort of index to Mr. Brooke's doctrinal development, and as explaining, 
in some instances, words which he would not use to-day. It is to be hoped that 
the important series of doctrinal sermons which Mr. Brooke has been preaching 
since his withdrawal from the Church may soon be given to the public. 



vi 



INTRODUCTION. 



ing to-day is essentially the same as that of five years ago. 
The primary significance of his new movement lies in the 
recognition of the inconsistency of these religious views — 
views long entertained with greater or less distinctness, and 
shared essentially by all the great Broad Church leaders — 
with his position as a clergyman of the Church of England. 

It was as the biographer of Robertson that Stopford Brooke 
first became known to the general public. His Life of Robert- 
son, one of the mo:st admirable works of its kind in the lan- 
guage, exhibited him as a firm and independent thinker, 
already well emancipated from conventionalism, and impatient 
of much in the Church's system, an enthusiastic admirer of the 
great Brighton preacher as a man, and in hearty sympathy with 
his teachings. " As a clergyman," he said in one place, " Rob- 
ertson brought distinctly forward the duty of fearlessness in 
speaking. He was not one who held what are called liberal 
opinions in the study, but would not bring them into the pulpit. 
He did not waver between truth to himself and success in the 
world. He was offered advancement in the Church, if he would 
abate the strength of his expressions with regard to the Sab- 
bath. He refused the proffer with sternness. Far beyond all 
the other perils which beset the Church was, he thought, this 
peril : that men who were set apart to speak the truth, and to 
live above the world, should prefer ease and worldly honor to 
conscience, and substitute conventional opinions for eternal 
truths." " That men," he said again, " should, within the 
necessary limits, follow out their own character, and refuse to 
submit themselves to the common mould, is the foremost need 
of the age in which we live ; and, if the lesson which Robert- 
son's life teaches in this respect can be received by his brethren, 
he will neither have acted nor taught in vain. Robertson was 
himself, and not a fortuitous concurrence of other men. He 
possessed a true individuality, and retained the freedom of 
action and the diversity of feeling which men, not only in the 
Church, but in every profession and business, so miserably lose, 
when they dress their minds in the fashion of current opinion, 



INTRODUCTION. 



vii 



and look at the world, at Nature, and at God, through the glass 
which custom so assiduously smokes." Brooke was already at 
this time thoroughly alive to the difficulty of maintaining true 
individuality under a system like that of the Church of Eng- 
land. "The great disadvantage," he said, "of a Church like 
ours, — with fixed traditions, with a fixed system of operation, 
with a theological education which is exceedingly conservative, 
with a manner of looking at general subjects from a fixed cler- 
ical point of view, with a bias to shelter and encourage certain 
definite modes of thinking, — is that under its government cler- 
gymen tend to become all of one pattern." 

Mr. Brooke's first volume of sermons, published in 1868, 
showed still more plainly than the Life of Robertson that he 
did not belong to the ordinary London pattern, and that he was 
able, in spite of the Church's system, to maintain his individu- 
ality and to speak fearlessly. Four sermons from this earliest 
volume of Mr. Brooke are included in the present collection — 
the sermons upon " The Naturalness of God's Judgments," 
" The Intellectual Development of Christ," " Devotion to the 
Conventional," and " The Religion of Signs " ; and these 
sermons, while by no means showing the maturity and depth 
of thought which we find in the more important parts of 
Christ in Modern Life, * and in the sermons of to-day, show 
the same freshness of feeling, the same unhackneyed method, 
and the same general intellectual tendencies. The volume at 
once established Mr. Brooke's reputation as an original and 
independent thinker, and he became from that time a real 
power in London. 

Mr. Brooke's second volume, Freedom in the Church of Eng- 
land, appeared in 1871, and consisted of a series of sermons 
suggested by the famous Voysey Judgment. The trial of 
Mr. Yoysey involved a discussion of the whole Broad Church 
position, and the object of Mr. Brooke's work was to determine 
the nature and extent of the Church's comprehension. The 

* The sermons in the present collection upon "The Fitness of Christianity for 
Mankind" and "Immortality" are taken from Christ in Modem Life. 



viii 



INTRODUCTION. 



volume contained sermons upon such questions of controversy 
as Original Sin, the Atonement, and Biblical Criticism, — the 
sermons in the present collection upon the two latter subjects 
come from this volume, — and it is especially interesting as 
showing how radical a man may be and yet find means to 
reconcile his views with doctrinal standards like those of the 
Church of England, or at any rate to justify to himself his 
continuance within the Church. There is, perhaps, no better 
popular defence of the Broad Church position, and how inad- 
equate a defence this is Mr. Brooke would now be quick enough 
to admit. It is to be remembered, however, that, while this 
volume showed Mr. Brooke to be more or less at variance with 
the Church's doctrines upon almost every point which he dis- 
cussed, he had not at this time given up the belief in miracles, 
which he afterward did, and which was the decisive cause of 
his final withdrawal from the Church. This volume of ten 
years ago is not therefore to be regarded altogether as the 
defence of one holding the views for which Mr. Brooke now 
stands, although it does oppose and deny beliefs which are as 
unreservedly demanded by the Church, if they are not as fun- 
damental to its constitution, as the belief in miracle itself. 

The radical views which Mr. Brooke felt called upon to 
assert with the greater emphasis, as the Voysey Judgment 
seemed in some respects to curtail that degree of liberty which 
had already been allowed in the Church, were expressed at the 
same time with studied temperance, and respect for opposing 
opinions. "I trust," he said, "that all will recognize in these 
sermons the deep desire I possess that in the midst of these 
manifold differences of opinion, the existence of which I cher- 
ish as a means of arriving at truth, we may not lose our 
liberty through fear, nor our reverence for truth through reck- 
lessness of opinion on the one side, or through a blind devotion 
to transient forms of thought upon the other." He proceeded 
to define his conception of a National Church, maintaining 
that a National Church was impossible and not national at all 
unless it permitted within its actual boundaries every phase of 



INTRODUCTION. 



ix 



religious thought possible to Englishmen, within certain limits 
which demand belief in a few cardinal doctrines, — doctrines as 
general as in the State the articles, for instance, of the Bill of 
Rights. In a word, the JSTational Church must tolerate and 
comprehend, on an equal footing, religious views as various and 
conflicting as the political views represented in Parliament, 
being, in its sphere, as true a miniature as Parliament of the 
national life. The creeds and articles of the Church must 
be viewed, like the Acts of Parliament, as entirely provisional 
and fluctuating in their nature, merely regulative and always 
subject to revision ; and opposition to them must no more be 
construed as disloyalty than attempts to reform legislation. 
"Would the Church, allow this freedom? If not, it was not a 
Xational Church, and its disestablishment was doomed. Mr. 
Brooke then proceeded to show what some of the changes were 
which criticism and science had made necessary in theology, 
and to defend the views upon the principal questions of contro- 
versy for which his party demanded tolerance and recognition. 
If such views could not be recognized by the Church, then 
there was but one course for the liberal clergy. " They can- 
not," said Mr. Brooke, " in the interests of truth, abide with her 
whose features are no longer those of a mother." " And if they 
leave," he said to his people, " and you agree with their love of 
liberty, your place is also no longer in the Church. Truth 
should be as dear to you as it is to your ministers. The lib- 
eral clergy ought to feel that they have the support of liberally- 
minded men in their effort to keep the Church open and on a 
level with the knowledge of the day." For ten years longer, 
Mr. Brooke kept up the losing fight. Xow, he has come to see 
clearly that his theory of a - National Church, fine as it may be 
in itself, is not the theory upon which the Church of England 
really works, and that he only stultified himself by continuing 
to act as though it were. 

But the pulpit of St. James' Chapel was no more conspicuous 
for its liberal theology than for its innovations upon the ordi- 
nary range of pulpit themes and pulpit methods. Perhaps the 



X 



INTRODUCTION. 



primary endeavor of Stopford Brooke's preaching, throughout 
his whole ministerial career, has been to clear religious life and 
thought of a false traditionalism, to oppose the tendency to 
localize and pigeon-hole religion, looking upon it as a special 
department of life, and concerned with a particular history and 
particular institutions, instead of embracing all history and 
being the informing spirit of all life and all the true elements 
of society. Christ in Modern Life is the fitting title of his 
principal volume of sermons. He would make 

" Our common daily life divine, 
And every land a Palestine." 

He would bring religion to bear upon every department of life 
and thought, and bring every department of thought into the 
service of religion ; would " claim, as belonging to the province 
of the Christian ministry, political, historical, scientific, and 
artistic work in their connection with theology," and " rub out 
the sharp lines drawn by that false distinction of sacred and 
profane." * Every sphere of man's thought and action, he said, 
is in idea, and ought to be in fact, a channel through which 
God thinks and acts ; and so there is no subject which does not 
in the end run up into theology, and may not in the end be 
made religious. A proper recognition of this, he believed, would 
bring about important changes in the methods and the func- 
tion of the Church, and greatly increase its usefulness ; and it 
was in accordance with this that he instituted, at St. James' 
Chapel, courses of Sunday afternoon lectures, which should 

*When the Shakspere Memorial was dedicated at Stratford-on-Avon, two 
years ago, it was Mr, Brooke who was invited to go down and preach the sermon 
appropriate to the occasion from the pulpit cf the old Stratford church. "I sup- 
port with pleasure," he said, " any movement which brings Shakspere more on 
the stage in this country. And, when I say that, I mean to support all dramatic 
performances which represent human action and emotion with truth, which tell 
or strive to tell the real tale of human life. The stage ought to he one of the 
best means of education in a State; and it might be much more so than it is in 
England, if the foolish and sometimes odious stigma laid upon it by religious per- 
sons were frankly removed, and a cultivated demand made for the production 
of admirable plays." 



INTRODUCTION. 



xi 



avoid as much as possible the form of sermons, but have some 
direct bearing on religious thought and the conduct of life. 
He invited well-known and competent men to speak upon such 
subjects as " The Inner Life of the Romish Church " and " The 
Relation of Music to Religion " ; and he himself gave the admi- 
rable lectures upon Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Burns, 
which have since been published under the title of Theology 
in the English Poets.* The experiment was very successful. 
It was much criticised, as was to be expected ; " but the blame 
of many accustomed to hear nothing but sermons from the 
pulpit," said Mr. Brooke, " has been wholly outweighed in my 
mind by the fact of the attendance of many persons who were 
before uninterested in religious subjects at all." He believed 
that much good might be done, if similar efforts became gen- 
eral. " It would give variety to clerical work ; and much knowl- 
edge that now remains only as latent force among the clergy 
might be made dynamic, if I may borrow a term from science. 
If rectors of large churches would ask clergymen who kuow any 
subject of the day well to lecture on its religious aspect in the 
afternoon, they would please themselves, enlighten their congre- 
gations, and fill their churches. And they would assist the 
cause of religion among that large number of persons who do 
not go to Church, and who think that Christianity has nothing 
to do with politics, art, literature, or science." 

It would have been impossible for Mr. Brooke to have 
chosen a theme better combining those things which he is best 
qualified to treat than that of Theology in the English Poets. 
First a religious thinker, he is next a literary critic ; and his 
various essays upon English Literature and its great masters 
have not been surpassed in then good proportions, their just 
estimates, and fine appreciation of inner purpose, by anything 
written in our time. His little Primer of English Literature 
is a very miracle of a book, reconciling compression with 

* A second course, on Blake, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, was subsequently de- 
livered; but this series has not yet been published. It is to be hoped that the 
larger public may not much longer be kept from the enjoyment of it. 



xii 



INTRODUCTION. 



living and breathing in a way almost never done before, and 
managing in its hundred and fifty pages to set Caedmon and 
Chaucer and Elizabeth's time and Anne's before us with a 
freshness and vividness that the big compendiums have scarcely 
ever dreamed of. Quite equal, in its way, is Mr. Brooke's 
larger work — still a very small work — upon Milton. It 
reveals the profoundest and most sympathetic study of Milton, 
and the completest understanding of the Puritan movement 
and the Puritan mind, with which Mr. Brooke himself really 
has so much in common. He is equally at home in every prov- 
ince and period of English literature and English history; and 
Mr. Green, the author of the History of the English People, has 
publicly acknowledged the obligations which he is under to 
him for assistance in the preparation of that great work. 

" The poets of England ever since Cowper," says Mr. Brooke, 
" have been more and more theological, till we reach such men 
as Tennyson or Browning, whose poetry is overcrowded with 
theology." The study of the theology of the poets is especially 
delightful and helpful, because their theology is the natural 
growth of their own hearts, free from the claims of dogma and 
independent of conventional religious thought. In their ordi- 
nary life, indeed, the poets were subject to the same influences 
as other men. They may have held a distinct creed or con- 
formed to a special sect, or they may have expressed the 
strongest denial of theological opinions ; but in their poetry 
their imagination was freed, and they spoke truths which were 
true because they were felt. " And the fact is that in this 
realm of emotion, where prejudice dies, the thoughts and feel- 
ings of their poetry on the subject of God and Man are often 
wholly different from those expressed in their every-day life. 
Cowper's theology in his poetry soars beyond the narrow sect to 
which he belonged into an infinitely wider universe. Shelley's 
atheism, when the fire of emotion or imagination is burning 
in him, and when he is floating on his wings he knows not 
whither, becomes pantheism, and his hatred of Christianity is 
lost in enthusiastic but unconscious statement of Christian 
conceptions." 



INTRODUCTION. 



xiii 



Of the sixteen lectures which, make up this volume upon 
Theology in the English Poets, nine are devoted to Words- 
worth, who holds as high a place with Mr. Brooke as he held 
with Robertson before him. " In coming to Wordsworth," he 
says, " we come to the greatest of the English poets of this 
century, greatest not only as a poet, but as a philosopher. It 
is the mingling of profound thought and of ordered thought 
with poetic sensibility and power (the power always the master 
of the sensibility) which places him in this high position. He 
does possess a philosophy, and its range is wide as the universe. 
He sings of God, of Man, of Nature, and, as the result of these 
three, of Human Life ; and they are all linked by thought and 
through feeling one to another, so that the result is a complete 
whole." From what Mr. Brooke has to say of Wordsworth's 
poetry of Nature, I quote a single passage, because it is so good 
an expression of the philosophy which underlies so much in his 
own preaching. Wordsworth he says " speaks of 

' The Being that is in the clouds and air, 
That is in the green leaves among the groves, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.' 

This Being, observe, is more than a mere influence. It is a 
conscious life, which realizes itself as a personality in realizing 
itself within the sum of all things. In fact, this Being, who is 
the life of the universe, is the all-moving Spirit of God, the 
soul which is the eternity of Thought in Nature.* It may be 

* " A few lines in the 'Prelude' express this clearly : — 
'Hitherto, 

In progress through this Verse, my mind hath looked 

Upon the speaking face of earth and heaven, 

As her prime teacher, intercourse with man 

Established by the Sovereign Intellect, 

"Who through that bodily image hath diffused, 

As might appear to the eye of fleeting time, 

A deathless spirit.' " 



xiv 



INTRODUCTION. 



the fashion to call this pantheistic ; bnt it is the true and nec- 
essary pantheism which affirms God in all, and all by him, but 
which does not affirm that this All includes the whole of God. 
Wordsworth's feeling of personality was so strong that he 
would probably have said that the personality of God in refer- 
ence to Nature consisted in God's consciousness of himself at 
every moment of time, in every part as well as in the whole of 
the universe. But, as this is a metaphysical and not a poetic 
thought, and as Wordsworth wanted a thought which he could 
use poetically, he transferred this idea of God realizing his per- 
sonality in the whole of the universe to an actual person, whom 
he creates, to a Being whom he terms Mature. And hence 
there grew up in his mind the thought of one personal, spiritual 
Life, which had infinitely subdivided itself through all the forms 
of the outward world, which could realize an undivided life at 
any moment, but which also lived a distinct life in every part. 
It became possible then for him to have communication with 
any one manifestation of that Life, in a tree or a rock or a 
cloud, to separate in thought the characteristics of any one 
form of it from another, or, omitting the consideration of the 
parts, to think of or communicate with the whole, to realize the 
one spiritual life that conditioned itself in all as a Person with 
whom he could speak, and from whom he could receive impulse 
or warning or affection. And, when this was done, when 
Nature seemed one Life, then the necessary spirituality of the 
thought made him lose consciousness of the material forms 
under which this Life appeared, and that condition of mind 
arose in which Nature was unsubstantiated in thought." 

It is chiefly English thought, English poetry and history, of 
which Mr. Brooke has written ; and it is from English masters 
that his culture has apparently been most immediately derived. 
And yet his philosophy is essentially the German philosophy ; 
and those very elements in Wordsworth with which his mind 
has so strong an affinity are the elements which Wordsworth 
owed chiefly to German influences, or which, at least, are of the 
distinctively German character. Stopford Brooke is a Tran- 



INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



scendentalist, whose English feet are set very firmly on the 
ground, combining a lofty Idealism with shrewd good sense, in 
something the same manner which we see in Emerson. All of 
the great Broad Churchmen have been deeply influenced by the 
German thinkers. Robertson, it will be remembered, was the 
English translator of Lessing's Education of the Human Race. 
Just what the direction of Mr. Brooke's studies was during 
his Berlin days we do not know, but the influence of the great 
Germans is conspicuous through all his later work. Of the 
philosophers proper, Fichte affected him most ; and he has 
expressly acknowledged his obligations to him. " There is 
within Fichte's philosophy," he says, "teaching both on life, 
morality, and religion, which makes him more worth the read- 
ing of persons troubled by the great spiritual questions than 
any other of the German philosophers." 

Stopford Brooke is first and foremost a Christian, more 
purely and strictly and emphatically a Christian than almost 
any other great religious teacher of our time. The ideas which 
Christ first made clearly manifest he believes to be capable of 
endless expansion, and to be the ideas most necessary for the 
salvation and elevation of humanity. "If we look long and 
earnestly enough," he says, " we shall find in them (not read 
into them, as some say) the explanation and solution, not only 
of our religious, but even of our political and social problems." 
" I believe, and rest all I say upon the truth, as I think, that in 
Christ was Life, and that this Life, in the thoughts and acts 
which flowed from it, was and is and always will be the Light 
of the race of Man." 

The name of Christ is connected with two religions or sys- 
tems of thought, — the one the teaching of Christ himself and 
the religion which every man may have in common with him, 
the other a scheme of thought about Christ and a religion which 
assumes that he was something other than man, and worships 
him. Lessing used to distinguish the two, for lack of exact 
terms, as "The Religion of Christ" and "The Christian Relig- 



xvi 



INTRODUCTION. 



ion." It is the " Religion of Christ " for which Stopford 
Brooke stands ; and it is to this, of course, that the terms Chris- 
tian and Christianity, in a strict and scientific sense, belong. 
Only the great prestige and power of the opposing system have 
made possible the miserable controversy which has been 
waged upon this point, and which mere reference to our general 
usage at once makes an end of. Platonism is not a theory 
about Plato. The true Platonist is he who accepts the philos- 
opher's cardinal principles as cardinal in the constitution of 
his own thought. He is not to be tested by what was acci- 
dental in the philosopher's opinion, or merely incidental to the 
general conditions of his culture, — e.g., the cosmogony of the 
Phcedon, — but only by the essential principles of his philoso- 
phy ; and, in determining what the philosopher himself was, he 
is only bound not to be inconsistent with these principles. He 
may not hold, for instance, that Plato himself was simply a for- 
tuitous concurrence of atoms ; for this were opposed to the first 
principle of the Platonic philosophy. And the true Christian 
may not deny Christ's oneness with God ; for the oneness of 
humanity, in its idea and essence, with the divine, the fact 
that God is our Father, that we are the offspring of God, " be- 
gotten, not made," was the first principle of Christ's philosophy 
and of his consciousness. So much it is indeed necessary for 
the true Christian to hold about Christ, in order to consistency 
with the fundamental principle of Christ's religion, — that he 
was one with God. 

But this oneness with God is not something peculiar to 
Christ alone, however superior his consciousness of it may have 
been, however transcendent the power with which he illus- 
trated and enforced the truth in his life and teaching, and how- 
ever unique his position as the great mediator of the truth to 
the race. Christ is simply the first-born among many brethren, 
realizing what is true in essence of every man, and what every 
man may realize, — lighted by the Light which lighteth every 
man that cometh into the world. Mr. Brooke has brought out 
this point very strongly in the sermon upon " The Light of God 



INTRODUCTION". 



XVII 



in Man," included in the present volume, and in the sermons 
upon " The Central Truth of Christianity," in Christ in Mod- 
ern Life. The central truth of Christianity and the distinc- 
tive doctrine of Christianity is to him the doctrine of a divine 
humanity. The first important doctrinal sermon which he 
preached after his withdrawal from the Church was upon the 
Incarnation. " The whole truth," he said, " contained in the 
doctrine of the Incarnation is becoming less and less a spiritual 
power in the minds of men, because of the miraculous which 
the Church has connected with it. The Orthodox lose, in the 
prominence they give to the miraculous, much of the spiritual 
power of the doctrine, and certainly the greater part of its uni- 
versality. Unless the doctrine be freed from the miracle, 
now linked to it, it will, as the belief in miracle dies out, die 
out itself, or lose its power. It will, of course, rise again ; for 
humanity cannot get on without faith in God's incarnation in 
man. It is at the very root and is the life-blood of all religion ; 
but its real foundation is deeper than miracle, and it will rest 
only the more firmly when the belief in miracle has perished. 
The spirit within man which thirsts after relationship with 
God does not need the miracle. The truth of God's union with 
man is clear to us without it, — clear and more comforting and 
infinitely more universal. If God be the Father of men, as 
Christ declared, then it is absolutely natural that he should 
enter into men and abide with them and in them, and through 
them reveal himself to other men. Of this continual incarna- 
tion, Christ is the highest and the purest example, unique as 
yet upon earth. But from the very beginning, in the first 
breath that man drew as an intelligent spirit in this world, God 
has been incarnating himself in man. This truth has been 
found in all religions. It forms now the foremost truth of 
Christianity. 'God and man are one,' said Christ. 'The 
Father lives in me, speaks in me, works in me. I am nothing 
save by union with him.' He spoke that, not in a character 
inherently unlike ours, but in the name and in the voice of 
humanity, to which he belonged. What he was then, we are to 



XV111 



INTRODUCTION. 



be. It is the normal end of human nature to be the dwelling- 
place of God, to be interwoven with divinity, to have itself 
taken into God, and God incarnate in it." 

This religion of Christ, viewing man under the forms of eter- 
nity, and giving him the immortality of God, invests his nature 
and his destiny with a dignity and a grandeur which nothing- 
else can do, thereby imposing duties and responsibilities as 
nothing else can do, and thus having a power and a fitness for 
mankind which are universal and eternal.* Mr. Brooke 
opposes the ideas of Christ to the ideas of Comte, to Secularism 
and whatever attempts to do the work of religion in the world 
to-day, not as excluding them, or as antagonistic to their real 
motives, but as genuinely including these as factors in itself*. 
Of Comte's " Religion of Humanity," he says, " 1 am unable to 
see how it differs, so far as it asserts a principle, from the great 
Christian idea. Everything it says about Humanity and our 
duties to Humanity seems to me to be implicitly contained in 
Christ's teaching, and to be no more than an expansion of the 
original Christian idea of a divine Man in whom all the race is 
contained, and who is ideally the race." Mr. Brooke does not 
join in the cry which has been raised against the religion of 
Positivism, but commends its careful study, and recognizes the 
force with which it has brought home to us many great concep- 
tions which the false system of the Church had brought us into 
danger of forgetting. It would be untrue in a Christian 
teacher, he says, to abuse a system which has so strongly 
emphasized the duty of self-sacrifice among men and among 
nations ; ''but it would be equally untrue," he continues, " if I 
did not say that the refusal to consider the existence of a per- 
sonal God and the immortality of man will, in the end, make 
that religion die of starvation." 

"Historical Christianity," says Emerson, "has dwelt with 

*"Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is iii heaven is perfect." is a 
command valid only just as it is an assurance that our own nature is divine. So 
far as that is true, are our obligations infinite. Goethe said, "If we would im- 
prove a man, it were well to let him believe that we already think him that 
which we would have him to be." 



INTRODUCTION. 



xix 



noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus." * And this is 
true, if he means by it, as he does, that which was acci- 
dental and particular about the person of Jesus, as opposed to 
the essential truth with which his inner, real personality was 
identified. In the sense intended, it is true, as he says, that the 
soul knows no persons. But all this is true only to him who is 
able to see its truth rightly, and that is in seeing also the sig- 
nificance of that personal element, which is so essential in 
religion and in that whole department of life into which the 
emotions enter, — in everything, almost, beyond abstract meta- 
physics. Goethe has taught us that the secret of good art lies 
in the recognition of proper limitations, in clearly fixing 
bounds, and not attempting too much. And a similar princi- 
ple of limitation governs much in the emotional life, and can- 
not be ignored without disaster. We cannot love John Smith's 
mother as we love our own, even if we admit with our whole 
head that she is as true a woman ; and we feel toward him 
who has taught us truth or done us good as we cannot feel 
toward the mediator of equal good to others. Few of us can 
be stirred by the story of Morgarten or Marston Moor as by 
the story of Lexington or Gettysburg, although we may be 
quick to allow that the Swiss patriots and the Puritans were as 
heroic and as right as our own fathers and brothers. This 
principle of limitation, truly apprehended and operating natu- 
rally, does not narrow, but expands the circle of our interests and 

* We are reminded of the lines which Leasing pnts into the Mahometan 
Sittah's mouth, in his Nathan : — 

" You do not know, you will not know the Christians. 
Christianity, not manhood, is their pride, 
E'en that which, from their founder down, hath spiced 
Their superstition with humanity, 
'Tis not for its humanity they love it. 
No; but because Christ taught, Christ practised it. 
Happy for them he was so good a man ! 
Happy for them that they can trust his virtue ! 
His virtue ? Not his virtue, hut his name, 
They say, shall spread abroad, and shall devour 
And put to shame the names of all good men. 
The name, the name, is all their pride." 



XX 



INTRODUCTION. 



our affections, — by which I mean that he who feels intensely 
the good and true nearest him is only helped by the strong 
feeling to a genuine interest in things more remote and more 
comprehensive. iSTew England, perhaps, of all parts of our 
American Union, has ever been most jealous for State rights, 
yet she has been the stoutest assertor of national sovereignty ; 
and the great international men who have risen up everywhere 
since Kant wrote his Eternal Peace — Cobden, Mazzini, Sum- 
ner — have all been men conspicuous for their fine love of 
country and of race. The " cosmopolitan " of the Boulevard 
des /(aliens is not the international man, — really not a man 
at all. In general, finally, be it said that, while it is true 
enough that truth is universal, always and eveiywhere truth, 
it is also true that persons alone are the depositaries and me- 
diators of truth. Left to ourselves, knowing no persons, Ave 
should have a very inconsiderable stock of " universal truths." 
And the words and work of every great master get no adequate 
interpretation save through our knowledge of the master's self. 
To refer to Goethe again, by way of illustration, — who knows 
Tasso or Faust or Wilhelm Meister, who does not first know 
Goethe ? 

The relation of all this to religion and to Stopford Brooke's 
preaching of Christianity is plain enough. If Christianity were 
no better abstractly than other religions, but only one of many 
equals, it is the religion identified with the stream of civilization 
to which we belong, the mother of us all ; and the truths which 
it utters speak to our hearts with an eloquence and force that 
no strange lips could give them. For the great masses of men, 
who rise to abstract ideas slowly, this objectifying of the truth 
and connecting it with persons is as necessary as the appeal to 
Lexington instead of Morgarten is expedient and proper. For 
whom of us, indeed, is this not necessary or helpful ? It is 
well for a race to have its Bible and to have its Christ, and to 
take them into its heart, even at the expense of much prejudice 
and superstition, and even though there were Bibles many and 
Christs many, of equal rank. The power of common traditions 



INTRODUCTION. 



xxi 



and associations, of allusions and appeals understood from the 
top to the bottom of society, of a religious poetry and prophecy 
and story which speak to all alike, is a wholesome and an inspir- 
ing power. It is a power which can be sustained only by prop- 
erly respecting the principle of limitation, whose operation 
reaches to every sphere of life ; and the man of culture must 
often find that, through some disproportion in his development, 
the intensity of the feeling which he used to have for this good 
or that has not freely or satisfyingly transferred itself to the 
many goods and many truths which his broadening knowledge 
masters. It is a question whether the man is to be envied who 
listens with equal emotion to the Psalms of David and those 
Ye die Hymns which sing the same truths, or who lumps the 
apothegms of Confucius and the Sermon on the Mount, any 
more than the American is to be envied to whom Boston Com- 
mon and the Mississippi mean no more than the Yang-tse- 
Kiang and the gardens of Bombay. And it is a question 
whether the religious teacher to whom all particular religions 
may have come to have equal value would not do well to 
illustrate and enforce his teaching primarily through that relig- 
ion which lies nearest to the hearts of the people, so the religion 
in itself be good and true. 

But this would be at best but temporary and a makeshift. 
The Bible once really ranked with the Yedas and the Koran, 
and Christ viewed as not inherently superior to Confucius, and 
Christianity as a religion would decay, or rather be subsumed 
under something larger. The patronage of the cultured teacher 
and his consideration for the necessities or weaknesses of the 
masses would not long count for much ; and, large as the com- 
mendable element in it might be, it would have from the start, 
like all patronage, a certain taint of insincerity. Mr. Karl 
Hillebrand, whose recognition of the important functions of 
the principle of limitation is so strong, in the midst of his own 
large culture, as to lead him to put in a word even in behalf of 
prejudices, — "good, solid prejudices," he calls them, — shows 
how the German patriotism of the last dozen years has had 



xxii 



IXTRODTTCTIOX. 



little robust vigor, because it was not bom naturally, but was 
the fruit of reflection, and is conscious and intentional. " It 
has a tincture of pedantry," he says, "because it has been made 
by scholars and literary men. It has sprung up froni a feeling 
of want of patriotism, and resembles the religion of the German 
romanticists, who had all been free-thinkers, and resolved one 
fine day to become believers, because belief was a necessary 
basis of all poetical excellence." 

Stopford Brooke's Christianity is not of this manufactured 
or prudent sort. Here is a genuine man, a man who thinks 
and is no Athanasian parrot, whose religion is no indifferent 
eclecticism, but who does believe with all his heart that Christ 
stands so far above other masters that he stands alone ; that 
his religion, like Homer's poetry, and in a sense far deeper, is 
as fresh to-day as at the beginning ; and that in the spread of 
his spirit and the appropriation of his ideas in their true pur- 
port, the li-beral application of his mind to the shifting condi- 
tions of society, lie the surest progress, the highest happiness, 
and the best hope of mankind. It is no thing of names with 
him. He will call Christian Christian only as he calls Homer 
Homer, — simply insisting that the greatest of all masters shall 
not be precisely the one to whom men may refuse to pay the 
grateful tribute which the Kantian or the Wesleyan pays to his 
secondary master naturally and unchallenged. But the truth, 
not the name, is the thing with Stopford Brooke. Quick to 
recognize the good in every system of thought and every ideal 
of life, he criticises them only when and in so far as they would 
drive out or obscure what seem to him the larger truth and 
better life. The largest truth and the best life seem to him the 
truth which Christ taught and the life Christ lived. He would 
not deny the abstract possibility of the coming of a teacher who 
should teach Christ's truth in a still loftier form than Christ 
taught it ; the truth itself, — that man is one with God, — than 
this there cannot be any loftier truth. He would not deny that 
one might come whose life should be as true as Christ's to the 
divine Idea, and be, perchance, in some sort, a larger life ; but 



INTRODUCTION. 



XX111 



he would say that speculation on the point were altogether vain 
and profitless, a waste of time. If that teacher and that life 
come, if indeed the forms of Christ's teaching grow obsolete, it 
will be only as the " Santa Maria " has grown obsolete, which 
still carried Columbus ; and it would still be true that the com- 
ing of Christ is, as Carlyle has said so strongly, " the most im- 
portant event that has occurred or can occur in the annals of 
mankind." Christ's words, however, have not yet grown ob- 
solete. They are the freshest things, to-day, in this old world; 
the fullest of life and of power. Surely, no work is nobler than 
a work like Stopford Brooke's, of so bringing the ideas and 
ideals of Christ, freed from the superstitions of the Church 
system, — "immaculate conception," post mortem materializa- 
tion, and what not, — which, at some stage or other in the 
process, protective doubtless and sustaining, now only hide 
and choke and falsify, — so bringing them to bear upon our 
modern life as to turn the world, the flesh and the devil of us, 
the ennui and cynicism and greed and calculation, to shame 
and honest work, to reverence and vision, compassion and a 
rational socialism. 

E. D. M. 



FAITH. 



1870. 

"And the disciples said unto him, Lord, increase our faith." — 
Luke xvii., 5. 

Every one has said how unintelligible the world is, 
and how heavy and weary is the burden of this unintelli- 
gibility. But its weariness and its weight are the spurs 
of our curiosity, and our curiosity is the parent of our 
activity. Were not the world unintelligible, we should 
not have been intelligent. It is the ceaseless array of 
physical problems, needing solution, which has trained 
the scientific intellect of mankind. It is the ceaseless 
array of mental and moral problems which has devel- 
oped the thoughtfulness of the race. It is the ceaseless 
array of problems about God and his relation to mankind 
which has trained the spiritual life of men ; and it is 
these last that come more home to us than all the others. 
We hand over the solution of physical and metaphysical 
difficulties to special bands of scholars ; and, on the 
whole, we accept the answers they give, where sufficient 
proof has been alleged, or we take no trouble about 
them. But the spiritual difficulties touch the heart and 
life of almost every man or woman. They claim that 
each one of us should look into them for ourselves, and 



2 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



find each of us our own answer. The great problem is 
presented to us, and we hear a voice which says, Find 
my answer, or be devoured by me. 

It is the old story -of the Sphinx. The Greek, in 
his grave, sad way of looking upon life, beheld it as a 
struggle against the unintelligible. Something was to 
be discovered ; and, if discovered, the fortunate one was 
master for a time of Life. But, if nothing were discov- 
ered, Life, as it went on inexorably, slew him ; and he 
died, and the Greek had no certainty that he should live 
in the future by the mastery of the problem. Even he 
who found a portion of the answer, and could make his 
will the victor and not the victim of Life, was doomed 
to be overcome in the end by the undiscovered secret, 
and CEdipus falls into hideous ruin. Fate has its own 
way with him. Yet even in that story we catch a glimpse 
of a higher truth, when the tale is finished by an inspired 
poet. The blind, old man finds at last relief. The Furies 
change their countenance to him, for he understands at 
last the meaning of their inexorable pursuit. He under- 
stands, and dies in peace. We too, I believe, one and 
all of us, are fated to understand all things at last. We 
shall see face to face, knowing God as we are known by 
him. But it will be a far longer business for some of us 
than we think or than we shall like. 

There are some for whom it is not long. It is plain 
that as the genius of some philosophers is almost intui- 
tive with regard to the secrets of nature, so there are 
other men whose feeling is intuitive with regard to the 
secrets of spiritual life. They know without proof : they 
need no authority and no evidence. They have no 
trouble of heart, but walk with God as friend with 



FAITH. 



8 



friend. But no one can tell how far previous education 
before they were born into this world may have given 
them that power. 

On the other hand, just as children, and afterwards 
men, learn the sanctions of physical laws through the 
commission of a series of mistakes, for each of which 
they suffer punishment, — pursued relentlessly by the 
Furies till, their secret being found, they become the 
Eumenides, — so in the spiritual world also there are 
many who can only reach good through having known 
evil and overcome it, can only attain to the knowledge 
of truths through having found out by sad experience 
the uselessness and harm of false knowledge of them. 
We are pursued, as long as we are wrong in our ideas 
of God, by the scourge of restlessness, or despair, or 
anger. Not till we find the secret is there any pause. 
To discover a portion of it is not enough. We must 
pay the glorious penalty of our immortality; and that 
penalty is often renewed doubt and spiritual darkness. 
Often, we think we know all we need to know : we say 
we have reached the goal, our faith is secure, we have 
nothing more to conquer. It is the very moment when 
we are surprised by a new aspect of a truth and feel 
ourselves ignorant, only half-way, with faith and courage 
tottering and troubled. God, in what seems to our wea- 
ried eyes cruelty, drives us from our rest. A new diffi- 
culty rises before us, which we must solve or die, till at 
last, step by step, it may be here, it may be long here- 
after, we enter the venerable grove, and know all ; and 
our rest is perfect, for our comprehension is perfect. 

It is the common objection that this is a long and 
needlessly harsh way of making us know him, when 



4 



FAITH AM) FREEDOM. 



God might do it so much sooner, if he would ; and the 
greater part of our work this morning will centre round 
that objection. 

In answer to it, there is first this, — that a good deal 
has been found out already, if people would take the 
trouble of looking at it. The scientific man enters into 
the knowledge of the j)ast, and finds a certain number 
of things which have been already discovered. He has 
not to rediscover these things. And the spirit newly 
born into a spiritual life enters into the possession of the 
spiritual experience of the past. There are a certain 
number of statements about God and his relation to 
men which have slowly, during the spiritual history 
of the world, taken their places as foundation-stones. 
All sorts of buildings have been raised on these founda- 
tions, — creeds, schemes of redemption, a multitude of 
sects and churches ; but, however various the buildings, 
there are a few foundation-stones always identical, and 
which one may now accept as axioms. Some insist on 
proving their existence; and, if they must, they must; 
but they lose a good deal of time, and it is not God's 
fault if men are fantastic. 

Secondly, I do not know if, as the objection says, God 
could make us know all truth at once, being such as we 
are. It is more than probable that the sudden revelation 
of truth, for which we were not j)repared, would either 
throw us into despair, or the truth itself would seem to 
us a lie. Revelation must be proportioned to the capac- 
ity of the organ that receives it. Truth is, in full, before 
Man ; but only that part of it reaches him which his spir- 
itual eye can take in. The rest, at present, would strike 
him blind. Your present ideas of God seem to you true ; 



FAITH. 



5 



but what would you have thought of them years ago, 
and what will you think of them ten years hence ? 

But you reply, Why were we not made capable of 
receiving the truth at once ? Why are we so imperfect 
as to need all this slow training and all this suffering? 
A loving God ought to have saved us that. Well, that 
is pushing remonstrance pretty far. And I cannot feel 
at all with that remonstrance ; for it demands of course, 
as I have often said, that we should cease to be men and 
women, and be other beings altogether, who have no 
trouble, no doubt, no struggle, no pain, no knowledge of 
evil, no progress of the kind we know, nothing of all 
that mingled success and failure, and all the feelings 
connected with it, which makes life so distressing, so 
dramatic, and often so delightful. I confess I should 
regret if that which we call human nature were taken 
out of the universe, and were replaced by what is sup- 
loosed to be the angelic nature. The interest of the 
whole thing is so enchaining that I do not think one 
would care to be immortal, if everybody were good all 
in a moment, and knew everything at once ; and I do 
not think the goodness would be worth much, or the 
knowledge either. Who cares for things purchased by 
no trouble? And what use are things, unless we care 
for them? I do not want to get rid of difficulties or 
mysteries, if the price be, as it must be, the destruction 
of the element of humanity in the universe. 

And now, supposing you allow that that would be a 
misf ortune v in what other way — human nature being as 
it is — is it possible that God should act toward it ? Is 
there any other process conceivable of making a weak 
thing individually strong than by exercising what is 



6 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



feeble in it against a difficulty? Is it possible to get 
wiser in any other way than by training the faculties, 
mental or spiritual, in the investigation of that which is 
doubtful and hidden ? 

In this matter, there is only one rule for all the spheres 
of human thought and action, for the life of animals and 
plants. All their jn-ogress is born out of antagonism: 
all their force, and therefore their amount of life, may 
be expressed in terms of the resistance they encounter. 
Therefore, considering the universality and inexorable- 
ness of this law, it is somewhat pitiable to hear the moan 
which so many persons make when doubt begins to dis- 
tress and darkness falls upon their spiritual life. 

When a long series of experiments made by a natural 
philosopher entirely fails, or when an unlooked-for result 
turns up in the course of the experiments, and seems to 
reverse all the theories he has held to before, he does not 
Avail and cry on account of the failure. He begins again. 
Nor is he in despair at having to reconsider everything. 
On the contrary, he is excited to the highest pitch. 
Something new, some wide principle, is hidden in the 
failure or in the new result ; and he cannot rest till he 
has unearthed it. For he has faith in nature answering 
his call and rewarding his toil. He does not suffer, for 
he knows that he is on the way to higher knowledge. 
It is true that the disappointment which the intellect 
suffers is not so painful as that of the spirit, nor does the 
overthrow of a scientific theory upturn and convulse life 
in the same way as the overthrow of a long-cherished 
method of faith. But the reason of this is that we are 
still subject to the bondage of thinking that God is angry 
with us on account of doubt, and that he will condemn 



FAITH. 



7 



us because we are forced to reconsider our old system 
of belief. We do not believe in God as the j)hilosopher 
believes in nature. We look upon him as capricious, 
23assionate, and unfair. We have no conception as yet 
of him as a Father who often deliberately places us face 
to face with the unintelligible. We think we have lost 
him, when we have lost our past concej)tion of him, 
when our spiritual rest is gone, and our light. But, if 
we trusted in this Fatherhood, and understood that our 
education is his care, and that it will take centuries to 
complete it, we should say to ourselves, when darkness 
falls on our soul and all our old views become vague and 
difficulties rise on every hand, exactly what the philoso- 
pher says to himself : " I have found out where my 
theory was either wrong or inadequate, and I have now 
a new interest in life. Let me, taking my past error 
itself as my starting-point, discover what is true. God 
will answer me, if I work, as nature answers the philoso- 
pher." And the moment the mystery comes, and doubt 
invades the heart, we shall say to ourselves : " Now I 
see that God my Father is plainly at work upon me. He 
is going to give me more to find out. I am again con- 
sciously under his training ; and, if I am true and faith- 
ful, and do not tire of patient investigation, and keep 
my heart open by prayer, and my intellect clear from 
exaggeration, I shall step out of this darkness into clearer 
light, know more of him than I have known before, and 
suffer the ennobling pain and the ennobling pleasure of a 
new revelation." 

But you say that it is of God himself that you doubt. 
He seems to you to be at variance with the moral feeling 
of your own soul. That is because your idea of God is 



8 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



now lower and more inadequate than you need have. 
You have accepted certain theological accounts of his 
nature in the past, and they still cling to you, or, having 
lost them, you have not replaced them by others. "And 
this is God," you say. " I cannot believe in him." Well, 
that is God telling you that that is not himself as he 
is to you. Others are satisfied with that past concep- 
tion : they can live on it spiritually, and it will not do to 
give them a higher view yet. But, now that you have 
been told that there is a higher aspect in which he may 
be seen, why are you angry with him, why are you 
despairing? Why do you not try to find out if there 
be no other view of him which will harmonize the belief 
of the soul with the reason of the man ? As plainly as 
one spirit can speak to another, he is telling you that 
there is a higher knowledge of him that you have as yet 
to gain. 

Dimly, it dawns upon you that this very distress and 
darkness is his work ; and, if so, that there is only one 
explanation of it : that there is a Father who is educating 
you from point to point, and that he has put you into 
darkness, because the light you had was not enough for 
your spiritual growth ; because, having done all it could 
for your education, the time has now come when you 
need a brighter light, a nobler idea of God and life. 

You think you are to get that at once. That would 
break the law of the universe. New light can only be 
got by a fight against darkness. The soul cannot be 
revolutionized except through battle. The elements of 
a new life can only be assimilated through resistance. 
Otherwise, they would not be your own. They are 
woven with the fibres of the soul by daily struggle. 



FAITH. 



9 



Without struggle, they would be mere surface things, 
which a breath of temptation would blow away. 

The darkness does not vanish all at once, nor the light 
flash upon us : God understands our nature better than 
to make that error. But, when in our contest with the 
gloom and in our patient feeling after God, there comes 
first a faint glimmering of the truth which we shall pos- 
sess, we rejoice and make it our own, and go on in its 
strength. Then a faint thread of rays steals in, then 
there is the morning star, then the cold flush of dawn, 
then warmer and warmer hues, — the heaven of our life, 
as we force our way onward, lighting up with new 
colors, — and then, suddenly, the new revelation leaps 
like the sun into the air, and our whole being is trans- 
figured. The struggle has made us understand the light, 
step by step we have appropriated it, and that darkness 
is done with forever. Other doubt, other darkness, will 
succeed ; but so far the curse of life has been conquered, 
and turned into a blessing. The Lord God has made 
our darkness to be light. 

Now, I say that on the hypothesis that we have a 
Father who cares for our spirit, and who is educating 
it to perfection, all this process is explicable, and expli- 
cable in such a way that it confirms the love of God. 
And, if the theory explain the facts, is it not probable 
that the theory is true? And if such a probability 
exist, and stir us to higher life, and give us strength, 
what should be our j^rayer, — what but this? Lord, 
increase our faith. 

The last answer I have to make to the objection that 
God's way of dealing with us is unfair and unloving is 
that it is plain that the process, if we go through it in 



10 



FAITH AJSTD FREEDOM. 



a reasonably noble manner, ennobles ns. And all that 
is required from us is no vague feeling, no exalted spir- 
itual passion, but just that which is required from every 
man in contact with any difficulty. 

A philosopher meets with a new fact for which he can 
give no reason. It strikes at the very root of his system, 
or it is irreconcilable with it at present. It tells him to 
go back and begin again, or at least it opens out before 
him a vista of work to which he sees no end. Suppose 
his disappointment overwhelms him, suppose the shock 
makes him despair, and, falling away from his faith that 
everything is resolvable into the order of things, he 
strikes work, what follows ? Idleness and its curse, the 
sense of intellectual degradation, a wasted life. His trial 
has not ennobled him ; but every one knows that, had he 
had faith in himself and in nature, his work upon the 
difficulty would have personally ennobled him ; that, had 
he said to himself, when suddenly this mysterious fact 
emerged in the midst of the known, when this inexpli- 
cable thing traversed the very theory which all the world 
accepted, " This means not so much that we are all 
wrong, but that there is a higher right to be found out : 
this inexplicable thing tells me — joyful me, counted 
worthy to find it ! — that I am on the track of a new dis- 
covery," he would either have made the discovery, or 
at least hewn out the way partly to it, shown the point 
in the distance where the new star among the truths of 
science would be found, when the work had all been 
done. 

He may be thus disgraced or ennobled according as he 
meets his difficulties. It is the same in common human 
life. We have it in our power, for a time, to ruin life, 



FAITH. 



11 



to turn its greatest possibilities into curses. When, op- 
posed by difficulties, we give ourselves up into the hands 
of unmanliness, fear, and laziness, it is indeed a miser- 
able piece of work we make of life. We have it also in 
our jDower, when we are faithful, active, joyous, and 
courageous, to live one after another half a dozen lives 
in our space of sixty years, and to grow more wise and 
more penetrative and more self-commanding every year. 

It is precisely the same in the difficulties and darkness 
of that which we call the spiritual life. They are to 
show us where we are weak, they are to suggest to us 
new discoveries on the nature of God, they are to give 
the soul something to do, to wake it up from lethargy, to 
develop its peculiar powers, to make it feel that God is 
inexhaustible, and that, let it dive into the ocean of his 
nature deeper than ever plummet sounded, it never can 
learn satiety nor know content. And are we to be in- 
dignant with the process which leads us to these things 
because it gives us pain, and to deny God's love because 
he will not let us rest in half-educated imperfection? 
That is a thought unworthy of our high destiny. A 
Greek would have been ashamed of it: a Christian Eng- 
lishman should hate it as degrading. 

In the struggle mentioned above as the struggle of the 
Thinker, the intellect of man is rendered noble and its 
powers strengthened. In the spiritual struggles of life, 
the spirit of man is rendered noble and its powers devel- 
oped. The strengthening of spiritual powers by exer- 
cise has been often dwelt on; but this strife with doubt 
and darkness is especially ennobling, because it gives 
us slowly the possession of the noblest ideas. In our 
darkest moments, we never lose the conviction that the 



12 



FAITH AKD FKEEDOM. 



idea of God is inexpressibly noble, and, as revealed in 
Christ, inexpressibly tender as well as noble, even when 
we have ceased for the time to believe in him. Is it 
really possible that any one can compare it, as an idea 
alone, to that of the rigid circle of constant force, or to 
that of humanity as an organism? It alone touches all 
that is in us, and develops all, — intellect, heart, con- 
science, imagination, and spirit. Pure thought, pure 
love, perfect righteousness, infinite beauty, producing in- 
finite varieties of itself in thought and feeling and form; 
the all-wise, all-sustaining, educating Father of all the 
spirits who have flowed from him, clothed even in the 
weakest words, — this idea makes one's being thrill with 
a strange, exalting power. " And I heard as it were the 
voice of a trumpet speaking to me, and saying, Come 
up hither." That saying expresses its impulse on our 
life. Linked with it are other thoughts, — the immor- 
tality of Man in God, the salvation from evil of all 
mankind in him, the redemption of human nature com- 
pleted, self-sacrifice as the central principle of all life in 
God and in Man. These are but a few: but, as they 
grow in us, they ennoble existence ; they make of this 
earth an august temple ; they burn in us like fire, con- 
suming evil, kindling good; and any process, however 
long, which leads us to their lofty mountain range, is 
worth going through with faithful patience. Let us 
therefore pray : O Lord our God, guide us ! Deepen 
our patience, warm our aspiration. Above all, increase 
our faith. 

Ah me ! you reply, I may be becoming nobler as I go 
through life, though it be by doubt and darkness; but 
I am in exquisite pain, and I want happiness. I want 
peace, ease. I do not want to be tortured. 



FAITH. 



13 



Well, then, you had better surrender and sink down 
into your happiness. Only beware, for it will become a 
worse pain than that you suffer now. The only way in 
this world to get peace is to make it out of pain. And, 
after all, did you come into this world to find happiness? 
Was it for your own sake alone that you were created 
into the midst of this vast humanity? What are you 
that you should pay so much attention to yourself, and 
lose in that attention the thought of others ? 

You are not here to find happiness directly as the first 
thing. You are here to discover truth ; and the way is 
dark, and leads to the Cross before it finds the Resurrec- 
tion. You are here to consecrate your life to the discov- 
ery of a portion of the Divine Law, to practise it, and to 
diffuse the knowledge and love of it among your breth- 
ren; and it is a work which will call upon you to go 
through much darkness, and to make sacrifices which 
will seem at first to rend your heart in sunder. You are 
here to help to build up the Temple of Humanity, to give 
your life for the welfare of the race ; and it is not possi- 
ble to do that work and at first to have an easy life of it. 

Happiness, indeed ! What business have we yet with 
happiness ? We must win it before we wear it. Only 
toil can give us the power of enjoying. And God knows 
this, and he puts us through this long and painful proc- 
ess. He saves us ; but we must work out our own salva- 
tion. He gives light ; but we must conquer darkness. 
And, if we want the lazy sweets of life, the ease undig- 
nified by „any thought, the life untroubled by any dis- 
turbing doubt, why, we may have it by throwing our- 
selves out of the sphere of God's training, and sinking 
down into our native mud. The happiness of Circe's 
sty, the happiness of being unconscious of our own deg- 



14 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



radation, and loving it, — " Upon thy belly shalt thou go, 
and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life," — that 
is not the glorious end a child of God desires. God will 
not permit that we have happiness at the expense of 
spiritual greatness. 

But, if we will have something better far, — a grave 
nobility of spirit; a life thrilled through and through 
with august ideas bravely won ; a vast and practical love 
for man, in which self will be forgotten ; an aspiration 
toward truth untiring as the eagle's flight, and with his 
sun-fixed eye ; the enthusiasm of one who loves with 
passion God and man; the temperate reasonableness 
which rules enthusiasm, so as to direct it to its work 
with wisdom, — then there is something higher than our 
miserable happiness. It is the awful blessedness of life 
with God, the knowledge that we are growing up into 
better things, the certain hope of a life of eternal right- 
eousness and love and joy, the stern delight of duty 
done. 

Stern lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 

Nor know we anything more fair 
Than is the smile upon thy face. 

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 

And fragrance in thy footing treads : 

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 
And the immortal Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. 

They are lines whose very sound rings with the trium- 
phant strength of the life which we shall possess at last, 
the strength of conquest over all darkness, sin, and death, 
— the life which never fails in energy and joy, for it 
never fails in love. To win it and to wear it well, there 
is but one prayer : it is the prayer of the disciples, — 
" Lord, increase our faith." 



GOD IS SPIEIT.-I. 

1878. 

" God is a spirit ; and they that worship him must worship him in 
spirit and in truth." — John iv., 24. 

The summer months had gone by, and autumn had 
advanced to seed-time, when Jesus, journeying to Gali- 
lee, stayed to rest near Samaria, in the plain of Sichem. 
It was about mid-day, and he sat by the well of Jacob. 
While he waited for his disciples, whom he had sent 
away to buy bread, a woman came from the neighboring- 
city of Samaria to draw water. He asked her to give 
him drink, and began to talk with her about the well 
and the water. It was one of those opportunities that 
he never neglected of awaking spiritual curiosity, of 
stirring into life the seeds of God that he believed were 
•in every human soul. Seizing, as was his custom, on 
that which lay before their eyes as the means of teach- 
ing, he spoke of a water of which whosoever drank 
should never thirst again. It was the water of the 
divine Life which he had come to give: it would 
quench the thirst of the soul, and it would become, in 
all who received it, a living well, springing up for ever 
from one life to another throughout eternity. 

On that portion of the conversation I do not speak, 



16 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



but on the other portion into which it divided itself. 
"How is it," said the woman, "that thou, being a Jew, 
askest drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria?" She 
expressed in that phrase a real wonder, a wonder shared 
in afterward by the disciples ; and, if we conceive what 
some time ago would have been thought if any well- 
known religious leader was seen in earnest conversation 
with a strong partisan of Atheism, we should have an 
idea of the way in which the woman and the disciples 
marvelled. 

It was a strange scene on which the sun looked down : 
a Jewish prophet of the lineage of David, for whom a 
poor Samaritan woman was drawing water; and between 
them that rapid interchange of thought that belongs, one 
might say, to equals and to friends. It was as if there 
was nothing to divide them, as if the prejudices of ages 
had in a moment rolled away : it was the overthrow of an 
exclusive caste, it was the prophecy of a new era of relig- 
ious breadth and charity. The scene itself was a j)ara- 
ble of the idea of the speech that closed it. " TToman, 
I say to you, the hour cometh," etc. The scene that 
followed it when the disciples came back and stood in an 
astonishment that had both doubt and blame in it is a 
parable of that which has ever happened since, though 
less and less as Christian charity has influenced the 
world, when any man has dared to exjiress, either in 
act or speech, the meaning of my text. 

It is that meaning that we have to discuss to-day. 

The woman laid down the question fairly: "You say 
Jerusalem is right, we Gerizim. Our fathers worshipped 
in this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem men 
ought to worship." We have both ancestral usage to 



GOD IS SPHttT. 



17 



hallow and confirm our faith, and who shall decide that 
I am wrong or you right? No conclusion can be come 
to : our separation is undying. 

It is more or less the condition of the world now on 
the subject of religion. Jerusalem condemns Gerizim, 
and Gerizim mocks at Jerusalem, and the bigotry and 
uncharitableness of both are about equal. There is 
nothing to choose between the Church or the Theists or 
the Moralists who deny all religion. A holy horror is 
met by bitter scorn; and one and all are equally inca- 
pable of putting themselves into the place of the others, 
of any of that imaginative power which realizes the 
difficulties, the temptations, the long-established circum- 
stances, the traditional emotions and ideas of the others 
— or of any of that loving-kindness which would say, 
" There must be good in my opponents' opinions, or they 
would not care to go on contending for them: there 
must be earnestness for truth, or they would not fight 
so steadily." On the contrary, it is quite common for 
all parties to assume that their opponents are hypocrites 
or liars, or, at the best, foolish and blind. Those who 
profess a lofty tolerance and liberty, whose one attack 
is an attack on bigotry, are often the most bigoted of all. 
Listen to one who professes morality as against religion: 
it is Samaritan against Jew over again. Listen to the 
Atheist as against the believer : it is Sadducee as against 
Pharisee over again. 

The whole thing is childish, like two boys in the 
streets calling one another names. And it is inexpres- 
sibly distressing. How can the world move rapidly on- 
ward, as long as we indulge in a spirit of hating one 
another, which makes ourselves hateful, as long as we 



18 



FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 



have none of that loving-kindness to each other which 
will render it possible for ns to unite in action for the 
good of all and the discovery of truth? There is but 
little hope of any swift progress, till we can all say: 
"The time now is that neither in this mountain, nor 
yet at Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father. God is 
spirit ; and they that worship him must worship him in 
spirit and in truth." 

Nevertheless, it is impossible not to see that a good 
deal of this contention is unavoidable, and that it has 
its good side. In this world, we cannot yet have 
peace, without previous war in matters pertaining to 
truth. Every truth or form of truth calls up its oppo- 
nent falsehood. Every good insisted on evokes its own 
special adversary, and war is inevitable. I came not, 
said Christ, to send peace on earth, but a sword. Sec- 
ondly, truth is seldom, if ever, unmixed. Those who 
declare it best hold along with it the elements of 
untruth, — evil in the midst of their good. And it is 
not unfrequently the case that those who are for the 
most part in the wrong, and who fight against the 
truth, have with them the very elements of truth that 
are wanting in the other side, — the good which will, 
when it is added to the better side, make its revelation 
entirely good. 

You may be pretty sure that is really the case, when 
the worst side lasts a long time. It wiU last, till its 
share of truth is assimilated. And the really wise thing 
for any one to do who knows that on the whole he is 
on the right side in any great controversy of truth, and 
who finds that the other side still hold their own fairly, 
is to say to himself : " It is impossible (since God is true, 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



19 



and directing the course of the world) that my oppo- 
nents should last so long, unless they have some truth 
in their error; and it is my business to find that out. 
When I do, I shall not only complete my own side, but 
I shall also overcome their error, and probably in such a 
way as to bring them over to the whole truth. It is 
perhaps not their love of error that keeps them my 
enemies, but, first, the natural clinging they have to the 
truth in their error, and, secondly, the incompleteness 
of my truth, because I do not as yet possess the portion 
of truth they hold." 

In both cases, it is plain that war is necessary, the 
world being such as it is. False things have to be 
proved to be false, evil things have to be gone through 
and exhausted, and the battle must be set in array. 
But it is also plain that a higher ground is possible to 
some persons, where the only thing that is inrportant is 
the truth, where all the minor things involved in the 
battle, — questions of place, such as Jerusalem and Geri- 
zim, of the church or the meeting-house, questions of 
mere opinion, of form, of symbols, of one religion as 
against another, — things which give all its violence to 
the battle because they involve personal questions, — are 
neither seen nor felt as of any vital importance. 

There are those who, partly by nature and partly 
through experience, stand on this higher ground. It 
is the ground on which Christ stood, when he said, 
" Woman, the time cometh when neither in this moun- 
tain nor y£t at Jerusalem will ye worship the Father." 
And the duty of those who stand with him, and by his 
strength upon it, is not to blame too severely the intol- 
erance of the warriors who fight on the lower ground, 



20 



FAITH AKD FKEEDOM. 



as is too much the custom. Harsh blame only rivets 
them in their intolerance. "Nor should you forget that 
you need great tact in dealing with others, if you stand 
on this higher ground. To live on it destroys a part 
of your influence. Your freedom seems indifference to 
truth to the people below. They turn on you, and say : 
" You blame our impetuosity. It is because you do not 
care for truth as much as we do." For their intoler- 
ance, till they can rise out of it, will seem to them to 
be zeal for truth. Your duty, on the contrary, is to 
search out the truth, wherever it may be, on every side, 
to praise it, to dwell on it again and again, till you 
isolate it, as it were, from its surrounding error, and 
make men conscious of it, — to reiterate, '■'■There you 
are right," till men's minds are fixed on the points of 
truth. Once that is done, the error will drop away 
from them slowly, but certainly; and the contest itself 
will also slowly change its spirit. It will, since the 
truths contended for are now more clearly seen, become 
less selfish, less mixed up with desire for personal vic- 
tory, less eager for worldly honor and reward, and more 
eager for the victory of truth itself. And, when that 
takes place, it will soon become more courteous, less 
one-sided, less intolerant ; and it cannot help becoming 
so. That ought to be your work. That is the true way 
to reduce bigotry. Above all, if you have been lifted 
into the calmer region, and feel that this or that out- 
ward opinion or transient form matters little, if only 
God and man be loved, it is your duty never to let any 
temptation hurry you into the evils you see in those 
below your region. Shame, shame, on any one who, 
living with Christ in the sphere of permanent and invio- 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



21 



lable truth, shall allow himself, through any temper, to 
be betrayed into violent or scornful condemnation ! 

Yet, for all that, there must be on your part no pal- 
tering with truth, no indifference to it. Looking down 
on the two sides that contend against one another on 
any one subject that involves a truth, you must be able 
— however much you may see true things in both par- 
ties — to say which side has the most right, which side 
it is right to join, which side the progress of the world 
demands should be supported. One must be preferable 
to the other, — Jerusalem or Samaria, — though there 
may be a higher and nobler side than either. It is here 
that part of Christ's answer to the woman comes in: 
"Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we 
worship, for salvation is of the Jews." 

The answer was given with regard to the existing 
state of things. It conveyed no absolute truth, but 
only a relative truth. It did not intend to say that the 
existing worship at Jerusalem was the best possible, or 
that it was even specially good. It only said that it 
was distinctly better than the worship of Samaria. 

It is well to observe in this the delightful reverence 
of Christ for Truth. He lived in another region than 
that of religious quarrel. To him, both Judaism and 
Samaritanism were worn-out forms of truth; and he 
came to put them both aside, and to lead men into a 
new world. But had he been like some of our modern 
prophets, who place themselves above religious disputes, 
he would not have thought it worth while to decide 
which of them had the most truth, which of them then 
was worthiest. "Both are nothing to me," he would 
then have said to the woman. " Leave them both alone, 



22 



FAITH AKD FKEEDOM. 



and come up and sit with me." And the woman could 
not have understood him, and would have thought him 
careless of truth. Two things which you know well 
enough are the case with regard to some of our prophets. 
They are not understood, and they are thought to be 
indifferent to truth; and both these imputations (of 
which sometimes some of them are proud, since they 
isolate them from men in lonely dignity) — though it is 
odd to be proud of not being understood, odder still 
of being separated from man — hinder their work, and 
spoil the good they might do to men. But Christ did 
not take that position. Though he lived in the loftiest 
region, at home with absolute truth, he could come 
down among the strifes of men about relative truth, and 
see on which side in the lower region the greatest amount 
of truth lay. He was not thinking of himself, nor of 
what the world would think of him, nor whether his 
way of putting truth would win the day. He thought 
only of the cause of truth itself and of the advantage 
of mankind. 

He thought of the cause of truth, and he felt that 
it was of high importance that he should plainly say 
whether Jerusalem or Samaria were the nearest to truth. 
And if we live with him in a world above forms and 
opinions, churches and sects, we shall often have, if we 
wish to do any good, to follow him in this. It is a great 
difficulty sometimes to descend and take the trouble of 
weighing opposite views, to decide between this sect and 
that, when Ave do not personally care about either. It 
is our temptation, living in the region of ideas, to despise 
the region of forms where the battle is going on, to use 
the language of the Latitudinarian, though we do not 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



23 



belong to that meteoric party. But it is a difficulty we 
should overcome and a temptation we should resist. 
For, though it is of no importance to us personally, it is 
of the greatest importance to the progress of the world 
that no indifference to truth, even to comparative truth, 
should be shown. We must take trouble and say, Jeru- 
salem is better than Samaria. 

And the grounds of our decision should be the same 
as Christ's. "Salvation is of the Jews": it is best for 
mankind that they should prevail over the Samaritans. 
That is the question we should ask ourselves, laying- 
aside all prejudice, stepping down out of our position 
in the future, into the midst of the existing state of 
things, — From which of these contending parties will go 
forth most good, which possesses elements most capable 
of being naturally developed into a higher religious 
form, which has most useful truth for man? And, when 
you have answered that, decide on supporting the party 
you think fulfils best the conditions for the present, not 
for its own sake, but as against the other, always how- 
ever declaring that there is a higher view, which if men 
could once grasp, both would fade away. Jerusalem is 
better than Samaria, and to be supported as against 
Samaria at present; but before long, when men are 
ready, Jerusalem will be set aside by a higher Law of 
Life. Neither here nor yet at Jerusalem shall ye wor- 
ship the Father. 

Another ground of decision is contained in Christ's 
reply : " Ye worship ye know not what. TTe know what 
we worship." The Samaritans had cast aside the Proph- 
ets, and gone back to the reA'elation of Moses. They 
had left out the last and the most inxportant link in the 



24 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 

long chain of the development of religious truth, and 
naturally their idea of God was grossly inadequate to 
the time in which they lived. They were like that party 
in our Church, who, putting aside all the later develop- 
ments of Christianity, go back to the early Church to 
find the form of their religious thought. And so inade- 
quate, so behindhand was their idea of God, in compari- 
son to that which it ought to be, that they might be said 
to worship they knew not what, — it might be God, it 
might be an Idol, but at least it had no living growth, 
no connected development. It was a stunted shrub in 
comparison with the Jewish idea of God. 

When you want then to know, among all the religions or 
forms presented to you, which to support in the present, 
ask yourself which can knit itself in the most unbroken 
descent to the longest past; which has grown most 
like a tree, year by year, century by century, extend- 
ing its branches wider, lifting its head higher; which has 
taken into itself most constantly, most consistently, and 
most progressively all human efforts after truth; which 
has, in its highest and best form — for of course, in 
judging, we look for that — conceived God most nobly 
and most in accordance with the wants and aspirations 
of mankind ; that is, in which has the idea of God been 
continually expanding, in equal step with the growth of 
the world. In that, men will best know what they wor- 
ship ; and that (however you may personally have out- 
grown its present form) is the one worthy of your ]3res- 
ent support. And I think, of course, or I should not be 
here, that Christianity answers best to that test, and that 
any form of it, even one as far below your higher view 
of it as Judaism was below the idea of Christ's worship, 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



25 



is more worthy of the comparative support of which I 
speak than an unchristian religion. Lofty as are the 
aims of Positivism, and unselfish as are the motives of 
unchristian Moralism, I should have no hesitation in 
giving that comparative support to a form of Chris- 
tianity with which I did not personally sympathize, as 
against these other forms of religion, because I should 
feel that truths more useful to man were contained in a 
form of Christianity, however inadequate, than in the 
very highest form of mere Moralism, because I should 
feel that the one was capable of development and the 
other not. At the same time, I should try to clearly 
mark the truths held by Positivist or Moralist, and show 
wherein they were better and more advanced than the 
Christian forms they opposed. And with regard to 
those forms of Christianity, if they were behind that 
which they ought to be, I should not say that they were 
absolutely good, but only better relatively than the 
others; and that, being inadequate forms, they were 
bound to perish to make room for higher forms which 
should assimilate the truths proclaimed by the other side, 
and complete themselves by doing so. That would be 
my view; but each man must judge for himself, and take 
the consequences of his judgment. 

Leaving, however, this special application on one side, 
the method remains, and the teaching on the whole 
question is plain, whatever may be your higher ground. 
You must not be intolerant of the battle waged in the 
world between forms and oj^inions about truth ; and you 
must, by forming a judgment as to which is relatively 
best and declaring it, show that you are not indifferent 
to truth, even to comparative truth. That is what we 
learn from Christ's answer. 



26 



FAITH A3TD FREEDOM. 



But there was a farther answer. The woman had 
stated the whole question of religious strife, and we 
have discussed that part of Christ's reply which had to 
do with existing circumstances. Jerusalem was better 
than Samaria. But there was something better still, the 
higher spiritual life in which the questions in dispute 
between Jerusalem and Samaria would wholly cease; 
the life in the spirit and in truth which should pass 
beyond Jerusalem as a place of worship, and even-where 
worship God; in which the temple and altar were 
neither on Mount Moriah nor Mount Gerizim, but set up 
in every faithful heart ; in which all contest should die, 
for all, however different the form of their creed, should 
worship God in unity, because beneath all forms the spirit 
should be one, — in which all division of heart should 
be merged in that unity of love where there should be 
neither Jew nor Samaritan, but only two brothers who 
should realize their brotherhood beneath all outward 
differences, because they would both feel themselves 
children of one Father. " "Woman, believe me, the hour 
cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet 
at Jerusalem, worship the Father." 

What a rush of light comes with the words ! It is like 
the sun dispersing night. What a flood of peace ! It is 
as if into the midst of a battlefield Love and sacred 
Quiet had stej^ped in hand in hand, till the arms dropped 
from the warriors' hands, and they knew and embraced 
as brothers one another. It is with an awful reverence 
mingled with the worship of delight, with admiration 
rushing into love, that we listen to words so beautiful 
that it were worth any suffering in life to get into their 
atmosphere or to share in the spirit that prompted them. 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



27 



The hour was coming, the hour was now, — for the new 
Revelation was already contained in him who spoke, — 
when all limits of time and space, of forms and cere- 
monies, should be removed between Man and God, and 
men should worship in spirit — the spirit of God, in 
truth — the absolute Truth. Now, even now, to Christ, 
all controversies about Jerusalem or Samaria were idle : 
he dwelt far off from strife upon the spiritual hills of 
truth. 

And we, taking this new conception of his into our 
hearts, rise with him into the higher region where the 
woman's question seemed to have no meaning, where 
religious strife is dead because God is worshij)ped as 
Spirit and known as Truth. Neither in the Church of 
England nor in the Church of Rome, neither in Theism 
nor Evangelicalism, neither in High Church nor Broad 
Church, do we now worship the Father. We take up 
for the outward vehicle of a life that worships in spirit 
and truth whatever form of creed suits us best, what- 
ever seems to our careful judgment to be the truest, and 
to hold, on the whole, truths in the best way for the 
world. And we never dream of considering the form 
of creed we hold as final, or as containing the whole of 
truth. It is, for the time, relatively truer to us than 
others; and we make use of it. But to us God is every- 
where ; and we worship the Father most truly when we 
enter the realm of Infinite Love, where he abides, beyond 
the strife of men. And, when we have so knelt, and 
prayed in spirit and in truth, and return to mix with the 
religious turmoil, we cannot now specialize our God in 
any outward form. We cannot bind his Presence down 
within any limited form of confession or creed. We can 



28 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



only smile when any Church claims to possess the whole 
of truth. And we think to ourselves : " In every religion, 
in every sect, in every superstition even, must I find — 
since he is Father of all men, and hath not left himself 
without witness in any single heart — some portion of 
that One Truth which is so manifold in expression. And 
life is too short, when I have so much truth to find out, 
for me to have any time to look after and abuse the 
falsehoods. Therefore, I will love men, in order to get 
at the best of them ; and, when I get at that, I shall find 
some new phase of truth in them, and there I shall con- 
fess the presence of God and worship him in spirit and in 
truth. So shall the whole world of religious thought, 
and, had I time, every human soul, become a temple 
where I can praise and pray, and have the profoundest 
joy." For is there any joy in the world equal to that 
we feel when we are able to worship, in truth, that 
which we confess the noblest ? There is no delight to 
equal adoration, when one loves, and rightly loves, the 
Person one adores. 

And now, that being the spirit of your life, do you 
not plainly see that the woman's question, so far as you 
are concerned, is answered? For your inward life, relig- 
ious disputes do not exist. You only take a part in them 
when you have to form a judgment, for the sake of the 
existing world, as to the comparative value of forms of 
truth. And, when you take part in them in this way, 
you cannot do it with violence or scorn, with intolerance 
or bigotry. These things are now impossible to you. 
They cannot exist in the atmosj^here you breathe, nor 
have they any place in the work your life is devoted to, 
— the discovery of truth in every man and in every 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



29 



religious work of man, and the worshij:) of God in every 
phase of truth that you discover. Your life flows on a 
stream of love ; and your companion, as you descend the 
river, to find at last the ocean of God's love and truth, 
is Truth itself. This is the Spirit in which you live, 
and the Spirit is God himself. Such a life is one long 
worship, and he whom you worship is a Father. 



GOD IS SPIEIT.-II. 



1873. 

" God is a spirit ; and they that worship him must worship him in 
spirit and in truth." — John iv., 24. 

It was not an utterance unknown to the heathen 
world before the coming of Christ, that God was Spirit. 
The Greeks, the philosophic Hindus, the later Platonists 
of Alexandria, and many others in many nations, had 
said it, and said it well. Then what was there new in 
it on the lips of Christ ? How was he more remarkable 
when he said it than the teachers who had gone before 
him ? It is a question often on the lips of the ojiponents 
of Christianity, and it arises from their ignorance of 
that Avhich they oppose. For where do they find that 
Christ put himself forward as giving especially new 
truths? A new method he did give; new command- 
ments, new inferences from ancient truths, he did sup]ny ; 
a new harmony of truths, a new centre for them, he 
did give ; but he was far too profoundly convinced of 
the consistent and continuous development of religious 
truth to dream of creating anything absolutely new 
in Truth. His work was linked to the first dawn of 
religious truth in the world, and was the farther devel- 
opment and collection and completion of all the truth 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



31 



that had been before his time. He used up all the 
existing materials of truth. TThat more he did is not 
my business here. I am only concerned to say that 
the present objection has absolutely no meaning at all as 
against Christ, and has none in this case. In many 
points, the quality of the spiritual doctrine of God as 
proclaimed by the Greek philoso]mers was as high as 
that of Christ. It was not, then, in its novelty alto- 
gether that it was superior. It was in this : that he for 
the first time made it common property. He brought it 
and other truths which philosophers and men of culture 
had kept to themselves — for they did not believe that 
the uncultivated could understand them — down to the 
ranks of the ignorant and the poor, to children and to 
women. He believed not only in the divine capacity 
of the soul of every man to receive truth; but he be- 
lieved also, and it was a harder thing, in the intellectual 
j>ower of all men, women, and children to comprehend 
truths, once the soul was awakened. Noble emotion 
would kindle the intellect. It was that idea that the 
philosophers had never seized, and it was by that idea 
that Christ far excelled them. 

Another than he had done the same before his time. 
That was the Indian Prince who gained the name of 
Buddha. He, too, laid his truths before the common 
people as property which ought to be common and could 
be common. In that point of the manner of teaching, 
he was at one with Christ. The contest, then, as to the 
superiority of Christianity and Buddhism does not rest 
on the manner of teaching, but on the quality of the 
doctrine taught ; and I do not think any one can ration- 
ally doubt as to the place to be given to the doctrines of 



32 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 

Buddha and Christ with regard to the nature of God, — 
the point in question to-day. 

So far then, we come to this conclusion. Christ taught 
a doctrine about God as spirit as high as the Greek, in 
a manner as noble as Buddha. He told a truth which 
the Buddhist excludes as untrue, in a way which the 
Greek philosophers would have thought absurd. That 
makes him sufficiently unique as a teacher. 

Think what it was that he did here ! He spoke the 
divinest, the central truth of all the loftiest Aryan phi- 
losophers to a poor, ignorant, and heretic woman, — even 
in speaking it to a woman transcending at once all the 
customs and ideas of the philosophers. In itself, that 
was a revolution, — the admission of women into the 
highest spheres of thought. But it is even more aston- 
ishing, when we think that he who claimed to be the 
very Son of God j^laced this ignorant peasant so far on 
an intellectual ancT'spiritual equality with himself as to 
believe her capable of comprehending and feeling the 
deepest truth of all. Do you appreciate the daring and 
splendor of that ? What does it not say of his insight 
into the human heart, of his infinite trust in goodness, 
of his belief in the capacity of the soul, of his reverence 
for the power of the human intellect ! 

Theologians tell us that Christ did not honor human 
nature as it was, and they have woven theories about its 
utter fall. But the life of Christ in vivid act and speech 
is one long contradiction of the lie which says that we 
are by nature not only far gone from righteousness 
(that is plain enough), but utterly separated from God. 
Neither from his light of wisdom nor from his love of 
righteousness are we apart. Neither in brain nor heart 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



33 



are we divided from him. We are his children on all 
sides of our nature. And it is our work to go through 
the world believing in these divine capabilities of heart 
and brain, feeling that when we speak of divine truths 
there is a divinity in man that will answer to them, 
and bringing to all alike, encouraged by this lofty faith, 
the truths which philosophers claim as only theirs, be- 
cause only to be grasped after long and special culture. 

We take our stand with Christ, and say: "Awaken 
love, and men will comprehend anything. Quicken the 
action of the brain by stirring high emotion, and all its 
powers are illuminated. Sow truth, and there is a vital 
power in the dullest, m ost barba rous soul, which will 
sooner or later, h er^^^g-^^r^p^t^ilat e it." And 
why? It is the ^aturk? food^of man/lK was curious 
that philosophy flould ,not see that fact, normhat it was 
trueof aUmen.K* vJUN 12 1895 * jj 

The ancient pmfcoph^^*MM could 
neither understancPfet^M^ kept their 

truths within their own§ircle, unil == maoing so they not 
only failed to influence men widely, but they lost the 
truths also that they held. And they lost them for 
precisely the same reason they had for not giving them, 
because they would not believe enough in men to cast 
them forth over the soil of the popular heart. To keep 
any truth within an exclusive circle is to insure its decay 
within that circle. It will take meaner and meaner 
forms, because more and more obscure ones. Its early 
vigor will be exhausted by confinement to a few minds, 
who will tend more and more to routine. It will grow 
gradually decrepit, and cease to have the youth which 
kindles others, and will end by either slow consumption 



34 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



or sudden death. For it will suffer morally under these 
conditions, as a family suffers physically that only inter- 
marries within itself. It will suffer from protection, as 
an article of commerce suffers. Truth must intermarry 
with all types of mind, in order to preserve its moral 
and intellectual vigor. There must be free trade in 
truth, if it is to be healthy. 

Moreover, to confine any truth within a limited 
sphere is not only to bring about its decay, but also to 
delay its recognition by the world. The main object of 
those who know truth is not to boast themselves of 
having it while others have it not,— and that there 
should be some who do this but shows the radical vice in 
these exclusive sects of culture, — but to work, that man- 
kind may share in it, and be blest by its possession. 
Now, the only way to get mankind to take it in is to 
send it forth everywhere. It will then be taken up by 
men, mistaken, and thrown into forms which will partly 
contradict its meaning. This will irritate its original 
teachers, and naturally so. But they ought not only to 
have the moral patience to endure that, but the intelli- 
gence to see that it is a necessary step toward the recep- 
tion of a truth that it should go through a number of 
inadequate representations of its meaning. Sooner or 
later, that process will have to be gone through; and 
the longer, through dislike of it, men keep back their 
truths from the common peojDle, the more do they put 
off the day when they will be clearly understood and 
fully received. But the Nemesis of an aristocracy of 
culture is that it loses intelligence and the sense that 
handles daily life. 

Do not think when I say this that I depreciate culture 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



35 



in itself, or the forms which advanced knowledge and 
thought give to truth. On the contrary, they are as 
useful as necessary. Culture, seeing further than the 
world in which it lives, prophesies the forms which 
Truth will possess in the future, sows seeds which will 
germinate into forests, and prepares the mind of the 
world for farther revelations. It has its place, and its 
work is a noble one. But it is false to its work and its 
place. It ruins its own use, and becomes a retarding 
element, when it isolates its truths through contempt for 
the ignorant, when it refuses to believe in the capabili- 
ties of man. 

Therefore, let any truth you possess go about freely, 
so that it may be produced in various forms in various 
minds, and assimilate new elements from new soils. 
Let it not only get into learned men who are partly 
conventionalized by the traditions of a school, but into 
the natural and untaught minds of the uneducated, 
where it will find original, if strange, forms, — forms 
not too high for the existing world to adopt, such as 
exclusive culture gives it for its own exclusive worship ; 
forms which can be used and worked by ordinary men, 
however much they may dismay the cultivated. Do not 
be too afraid or too squeamish. Put Truth forth into 
the big world among rough hearts : give it, as you give 
freedom, to all men. Then it will spread, keep alive, 
and finally triumph. 

It was this Christ saw, and therefore Christianity flew 
far and near, took a novel life in every heart, a novel 
form in every nation, and though its ideas, by the very 
nature of the method, were travestied, or turned upside 
clown, or idealized too much, or realized too grossly 



36 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



(in fact, they suffered every transformation they could 
suffer), yet they spread, they lived an ever-renewed 
life ; and, clearly conceived and justly felt by some, they 
have already shaken off many of their false and absurd 
forms, and stand out, the leading conceptions on which 
the progress of the race is founded. The false and 
absurd forms, or the inadequate ones that still remain, 
will also be exhausted in the sifting and resiftina: which 
the intelligence and heart of all the world will give 
them; and after ages of development, during which 
mankind shall have gone through them up to its full 
height, they will appear as the sun appears when, lifting 
his majesty out of the clouds of morning and drinking 
them into his light, he illuminates with joy and radiance 
all mankind. 

The whole conception, the whole method, was worthy 
of a divine mind, was prompted by a foresight truly 
Godlike. It needed intense belief in God, it needed 
intense belief in human nature; and it had both in 
Christ in a way which was true of no other teacher 
the world has known. It was a method which, once 
accepted (and in its determined carrying out of it the 
Christian Church has been true to its Founder), became 
the enemy of all aristocracies of culture and religion, 
and wherever it prevails it is their foe. Christ is at the 
head of a spiritual democracy before God. He said: 
" All men are equal : in spirit and in heart, they are all 
to be conceived as capable of receiving the same truths, 
though the degree of their growth in them be different. 
In the giving of truth there shall be no exclusiveness. 
Therefore, I take this central truth, and give it to this 
ignorant woman to make of it what she likes. God will 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



37 



direct it; the seed sown will grow, — it may be into a 
false form, but it will finally clothe itself with a true 
one." And how right he was ! Better truth in a false 
form than a lie in a true one ; better truth in an inade- 
quate form than exclusive silence about truth. The 
form will perish, the truth will remain and rise again 
with a new morning in its eyes. 

That is what I have to say of the method of teaching 
which Christ practised, as I learn it from this story. 
And now for the truth itself. God is Spirit; and they 
that worship him must worship him in sj)irit and in 
truth. 

I approach one part of it, or God as a spirit in all 
men, by dwelling on Christ's act in giving this truth to 
the Samaritan woman as a representative act. In giving 
it to her, he gave it to all in her state of intellect and 
heart. He proclaimed in giving it to her that it was 
not only for learned and civilized people, but for all 
people, however ignorant, savage, and poor ; and, if for 
all, then the spiritual life, or the indwelling of God, was 
possible to all. But, if it was possible for all, it could 
only be so by a previous kinship between all human 
spirits and God the source of spirit. To give it to all 
was then to proclaim that God as spirit moved in all. 

Again, to put it in another form. When Christ gave 
that truth to all, it was in fact the logical carrying out 
of the truth itself. God is Spirit. Did it occur to no 
philosopher when he excluded some from the knowledge 
of that truth as incapable of feeling it that he was 
practically denying it? How could God be Spirit, if 
any human sjnrit whatever was radically unable to know 
and live by that truth. For it supposes God — unless 



38 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



we deny a soul to the ignorant or the brutal, as some 
more reasonably did — as in all spirits ; it supposes that 
no spiritual being can exist at all except through the 
existence in it of the essential spirit. That is the logical 
inference : if he is spirit, he is in all spirits; in all living, 
thinking, feeling beings of whatever kind. What! the 
philosopher would say, and some are saying now, — in 
the Helot, and the barbarian, in those who live like the 
brutes, who mock at knowledge ? in the far back men in 
whom our race first felt intelligence and whose remains 
We find in caves and dens of the earth? in the gross 
savage of Australia and Africa, in races as far removed 
from our intelligence as east is from west? in the 
criminal and the outcast of our streets, in the sinner as 
in the seraph? Yes, that is simply what Christ said and 
meant, believe it or not, if you will, — that is simply what 
the statement that God is Spirit partly means, unless we 
deny that there is a God who is Spirit. There is in all 
who are born into this world as part of mankind a 
universal Life, and that life is God's life, latent in some, 
more formed in others, vivid and full in the best of the 
race, but absent from none. None are divorced from 
the Life of Truth and Love and Righteousness, none able 
finally to be divorced from it; and though that Life in 
the man, like Truth in the world, may run wild and run 
to evil, it will be sovereign in him in the end and perfect 
him, as Truth will be sovereign in the race. That is the 
first conception I give you with regard to the truth of 
God as Spirit. 

Believing that, what should be the result on our life ? 
We should ourselves worship God in this truth, and in 
its spirit live among men. For ourselves, to worship 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



39 



God in this truth is to live one's whole spiritual life in 
it and by it, believing that God is in us. We may have 
been reckless, godless, because we heard our nature pro- 
nounced to be corrupt in all its ways : we now turn with 
a thrill of joy, and recognize, led by the light of a new 
faith, the very Spirit of God in us, speaking, living, 
impelling, working with us for our perfection. We 
believe, not in the degradation of our nature, but in 
the inspiration by God of its best desires and affections. 
We know it is true that we are twofold beings, half-evil 
and half-good; and we know our evil all the better when 
we are conscious of the good in us. We feel all our 
human weakness and its failures; but we also know that 
a high resolve which passes into action, and the uncon- 
tented energy which despises a day gone by without 
some progress toward our ideal, — that the tears of a 
penitence which is not repented of, and the faith which 
begins again after failure, — that the hopes which are so 
bright and pure that they act on us like realities, and 
the Love which is making our whole character new, — 
are things in us not merely human, but the work within 
us of an inspiring Spirit whom we worship in spirit. 

There is indeed a God with us, in our hearts. Believe 
in that, live in the truth that God is incarnating himself 
in you, that his spirit is at one with yours. So that, if 
you will, your thought and work and will may be God's 
thought and work and will, and you yourself become a 
Christ, dwelling in God, and God in you, at one with 
the Father, as he was at one with the Father. Realizing 
the full meaning of the last part of the prayer of the 
Saviour in the Gospel of St. John, all life will become 
divine, all thought godlike, all work glorious : you will 



40 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



live in the very Being of the Eternal and Righteous God, 
through the power of Jesus Christ. 

Secondly, worship God not only in yourselves in this 
truth, but live in it and in its spirit among men, and 
your outward life will then be in it worship of God in 
spirit and truth. 

What will that worship be ? It will be to search for 
the divine in men, to assume its existence, to delight in 
it, and draw it forth. Most of us assume the contrary, 
and we find it. Men find that which they seek; and 
there is plenty of evil to find, if we like that sort of dis- 
covery. It is bad and ugly work; for, looking for evil 
and finding it, we make men more evil than they were 
before. Did you ever search for falsehood in your child, 
and not find it, and not make your child falser by contin- 
ually imputing falsehood to it, and making it conscious 
of it? That is the wicked work men may do in the 
world to their fellow-men, and it is devilish work indeed. 
Or, if they do not find evil, — being spurred by their 
base assumption of evil in man, — they create it. Their 
eyes are blind to good, quick to image sin. Their very 
intelligence is made foolish by prejudice of evil, — just 
as some in a late autobiography refused to believe in a 
disclaimer of wrong from the lips of the dead, as if it 
could be a lie ! This is also, in its stupidity, as well as 
its malice, quite in harmony with the devil nature. 

It was not, it never was, the way of Christ. He 
neither looked for evil, and found it, nor was forced 
by an ugly necessity to invent it. He assumed, on the 
contrary, the divine in all, searched for it, expected it, 
and found it. And it is that more than all else in him 
that attaches me to him : it is that I reverence and wor- 



GOD IS SPIRIT. 



41 



ship with my whole soul. Let it be our way of worship- 
ping God the Spirit among men. Let us say, when we 
meet man, woman, or child : " The goodness of God is 
in this human spirit, if I only could find it. Give me 
therefore, Divine Spirit, whom in the spirit of this truth 
I worship, power to find thyself here in my fellow-man. 
If thy goodness be clear within him, may it teach and 
help me : if it be latent, overlaid with error and sin, may 
I have the blessedness of drawing it forth to light, and 
making known to the man how good he may become, 
how near God he is. What my Saviour did for the 
Magdalene and for Zaccheus be my example and my 
aim." 

That will be a blessed life, — a real life of worship of 
God in spirit and truth. It will lead you, as it led Christ, 
to care very little for the judgments of the world about 
persons or social classes, or for the judgments of moral- 
ists and so-called religious persons. It will lead you into 
what the world and its whitewashed sepulchres will call 
false charity and immoral laxity of opinion. You will 
be said to be mad, or to have a devil. You may be 
called not of God, because you do not obey the maxims 
of social opinions, and infidel because you traverse the 
faiths of society. But that will matter little, if you are 
sure of your faith in goodness. The talk of the world 
about you will be as the hum of a city to a man who 
lives above it on the hill, — it will scarcely reach your 
ear. "Not is it worth your while to listen to it. It 
leadeth only to penury of intelligence and to meanness 
or hardness of heart. The maxims of society and the 
condemnations it formulates by them on the ground of 
its ceaseless suspicion of evil are so wicked at times, and 



42 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



so ugly always, that your great difficulty will be to 
extend to the persons who put them forth the tolerance 
and the loving-kindness which you must not give to 
their opinions; and the spirit of them is so dull and 
unintelligent as well .as uncharitable — is not all want of 
charity necessarily stupid? — that the greatest good that 
can happen to a man's heart or intellect is to have 
escaped altogether from the atmosphere of the world. 
But you must not exj:>ect at the same time to get on in 
the world: you must frankly give up its rewards, if you 
choose to escape from its region ; and you must escape 
on Christ's ground, — on the ground of believing in the 
goodness of man. It will not do to separate yourself 
from the world, and to keep up harsh judgments and 
contempt of men and disbelief in goodness, and become 
the morose and inhospitable scorner of men. You must 
not, in setting yourself against the opinions of the world, 
disbelieve in the divine Spirit in those who hold those 
opinions, else you are just as bad as they. Nay, more, 
in such a separation you are in worse case than if you 
lived in the world, — for there you are at least among 
men and have a chance of attaining belief in goodness, — 
in bitter isolation you have none. No, you must live 
your se]3arate life in separation from opinions, not from 
men, and live it freely, nobly, on the ground of Christ, 
— on belief in the divine spirit in all. Then your heart 
will be warm enough not to care what men will say of 
your opinions or your mode of life. You will be very 
happy. You will have the ceaseless joy of finding 
people so much better than you imagined, of making 
people really better by bringing them to know their own 
good, and giving them hope and faith in God by that 



GOD IS SPIRIT, 



43 



knowledge; of sympathies continually extending and of 
new lives continually added to yours, so that your soul 
will widen every day; of greater hopes for man grow- 
ing greater and more beautiful as you grow older ; of an 
increasing conviction of God's presence and power in 
men and in yourself, and of the certainty springing 
from that, of final restoration for mankind. And day 
by day, to add to your joy, there will increase the 
number of those who will thank you for new life, and 
love you so dearly and so faithfully that you will not 
know what to do with your happiness, except by making 
it an increased power of making others happy. And, 
finally, your own religious life will deepen. Living 
always with God in others, continually finding him in 
them, and worshipping him there, you will see new 
phases of his character, and your concej^tion of him 
will grow nobler and more various. Living always with 
what you find of righteousness and truth and love in 
others, you will grow into greater love of these divine 
Powers. The desire to realize them more fully in your 
life will change into the power to do so, — for strong 
desires incessantly searching for and conversant with 
their objects become powers of those objects, — and at 
last beholding in all men, in every living spirit, some- 
thing of God's intellectual and spiritual life, some phase 
of his love or his beauty or his wisdom or his truth, 
you will see in yourself and in all, as in a glass, the glory 
of the Lord, and be changed into the same image, from 
glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 

See now to what we have been led ! Look around you, 
and in every human soul we behold that God is Spirit. 
We cannot see one lonely islet of humanity where he 



44 



FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 



is not, where his light does not shine, round which his 
love does not break like waves. Wander where we will, 
in the human spirit, we find him; and, finding him 
and knowing him everywhere, how can we help adoring 
him? We worship him in spirit and in truth, and he 
seeks with delight for our worship. 



THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 



1875. 

"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom : 
and the grace of God was upon him." — Luke ii., 40. 

The way in which we naturally represent God to our- 
selves is as a man with the power and wisdom and 
goodness of a perfect man. It was inevitable that this 
should be the case in early times among men not capable 
of abstract thought. We see the same thing working in 
our children, even in ourselves. In prayer, in thanks- 
giving, in the going forth of feeling to him, however 
much our purer reason denies God's visible personality, 
we represent him to ourselves in human form. 

It is a tendency which, indulged in too far, has pro- 
duced great evils and awakened the strongest opposi- 
tion. In the present day, scientific study of all kinds, 
as well as philosophy, have set themselves against any 
anthropomorphic representation of God. If there be a 
God, they say, conceive him through nature. I have no 
objection. In fact, the immense increase of knowledge 
forces us to reform our intellectual conception of God ; 
and he would be a fool indeed who did not use all means 
whatever of enlarging and ennobling that conception. 
Moreover, if we believe in God, all the new knowledge 



46 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



comes from him, and is intended to reveal more of him 
to us ; and, when we receive it, we take it not only for 
its own sake, but that we may lead all the ideas we 
receive from it back to their source, and find them com- 
pleted and harmonized in our idea of him. All sciences 
end in theology. Therefore, it is with joy and the kind- 
ling hope of reaching higher truths about the Divine 
that we listen to all that men of science tell us. We 
know, if they do not, that Nature is the body of God, 
and that it reveals him as our body; and its organs and 
their functions reveal our thought. In its myriad-minded 
work, it discloses the myriad-minded God. a The invisi- 
ble things of him from the creation of the world are 
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are 
made, even his eternal power and godhead." We are 
bound, then, if we would have a worthy theology, to be, 
if not students of science, at least students of the results 
of science. 

And it is just the same with that part of art which 
addresses the sense of beauty and its pleasure in Nature. 
Art, in rej:>resentation of natural beauty of landscape 
and of form, has more than doubled the range of its 
work, both in painting and poetry. Almost the whole 
natural world has been laid under contribution by art 
with an intensity and a universality unknown before ; 
and if we are wise, and know our time and our needs, 
we ought to be able to take all the ideas pertaining to 
beauty and form which we receive through art concern- 
ing Nature, and lead them upwards also to ennoble and 
enlarge our idea of God. 

All, then, that we knew previously of infinite order, of 
harmony within diversity, of thought as Lord and King 



THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 



47 



of matter, of beauty as its soul, of infinite evolution, of 
infinite love brooding in the world of Nature, of ever 
new weaving and reweaving, forming and reforming, has 
been indefinitely increased through the new work of 
science and of art. What is the result, what should be 
the result, for us who believe in God ? We should say 
with great gratitude, " Our intellectual and imaginative 
conception of God as pure Thought and pure Beauty has 
also been indefinitely increased, our whole theology is 
widened." And this is what science and art have done 
for us : only in their doing of it we have got rid of the 
humanity of God, of the conception of his personality. 

Is this all we need to know of God ? Are we satisfied 
with a God who contents our intellect and our sense of 
beauty, — with God conceived as pure Thought through 
knowledge, or pure Beauty through art ? We have cer- 
tainly got rid of anthropomorphism and of personality ; 
but are we much the better for getting rid of them? 
Does it give us all we want ; or, indeed, is it the highest 
conception we can form of God to say he is the universe 
of Nature conceived as Matter, or the universe of Nature 
conceived as Thought, or the mind of Nature conceived 
as Harmony and Beauty and impersonal Love? 

It seems to me that as many evils follow on the exclu- 
sive representation of God as impersonal Thought or 
Beauty or Love as follow from the exclusive representa- 
tion of him as having a human personality. What are 
we to do ? This : let us take all the ideas we win from 
the world of Nature and form out of them part of our 
conception of God. But the world of Humanity is more 
important than the world of Nature, and we ought to 
conceive God also through it : we ought to add to the 



48 



FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 



thoughts we have won of him from Nature others which 
we gain through Man, and the first and most natural 
way of thinking of him is as perfect Manhood. It was 
that idea that Christ gave to us in a way fitted for 
the conscience and the spirit. God was our Father in 
heaven, who was absolutely good, and who loved us 
utterly and wished us to be as good and as loving as 
himself, and worked with us for that purpose. God was 
placed in a human relation to us ; and we conceived him, 
not only as Thought and Beauty, but as a righteous Per- 
son and a divine Father, whose Spirit was the source of 
truth and love and pity and justice. He was made per- 
sonal, and put into personal, moral, and spiritual rela- 
tions to us. It was the highest anthropomorphism. 

Add, then, to the conception of God we have received 
from science and art that which we have received from 
Christ; add, that is, to infinite Thought and Beauty 
the idea of an infinite Person, with a will, a character, 
a sense of right, a power of love and truth and justice 
such as we possess, but freed from sin and infinitely 
extended, and we possess a conception of God of which 
we need not be otherwise than justly and nobly proud. 
Only guard it by remembering always that, in saying 
that God is personal, we do not mean to say that his 
personality is the same as ours, but only that there is 
that power in him by which he can make himself per- 
sonal in us and for us, and that he is the source of 
personality such as we conceive it. Infinite Thought, 
infinite Beauty, infinite Love and Truth and Righteous- 
ness, infinite Humanity, infinite Personality, all are his ; 
but they do not fully express him, and to take any one 
of them and limit our idea of him to that alone is evil 



THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 



49 



and leads to evil. For we must remember that, if we 
conceive God as Man exclusively, we are sure to produce 
as much evil as if we conceive God as Nature exclusively. 

Do we not know how evil it is ? Theology has taken 
this idea of God conceived of as a Man, and so exclu- 
sively dwelt upon it that it has given birth to all kinds 
of wrong and idolatrous ideas about God. I need not 
dwell on the various phases in which this special one- 
sidedness has appeared. God has been conceived and 
represented as a kind of Csesar, a great king and warrior, 
of irresponsible power, whose will was his only law, and 
not his will limited by right; whose might made his 
right ; a tyrant and no more. He has been conceived 
as a great Philosopher alone, or a great Judge alone, or 
as a great Creator alone, or as a Mechanician, divided 
from his universe, arranging the whole and leaving 
details to themselves. And all these ideas, because they 
stood alone and limited our idea of God, brought forth 
evils on evils. Take them all, take every one you can 
gain, and they will each modify the other and lead you 
on to higher ideas. Take one only, and it will corrupt 
in your hands. This, then, is conclusive. The concep- 
tion of God through Man is good when it takes into it 
all the ideas we receive of him from Nature, evil when 
it does not. The conception of God through Nature is 
good when it takes into it all the ideas we receive of 
him through Humanity, evil when it does not. And our 
whole conception of him ought to be drawn from all 
that we learn from Nature and all that we learn from 
Humanity. On that ground, we have almost endless 
means of expanding our idea of God; and anthropo- 
morphism, instead of degrading or rendering false that 



50 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



idea, is of the highest use possible in ennobling it and 
making it more true. Only, as I say, it must be com- 
plete. When we frame an idea of God through Man, 
we must take the whole of Man. Is that done? One 
instance will occur at once to you of the contrary, 
which will not only illustrate the evil of limitation of 
thought in this matter, but also, when corrected, the 
amazing expansion and ennobling of the idea of God 
which is given by its correction. Men have conceived 
God only as masculine, and not feminine. He thinks, 
feels, acts like a man in their thoughts, never like a 
woman. The result of this one-sided way of thinking 
was that all kinds of horrors were connected with his 
action, and all kinds of wicked feelings attributed to 
him, in which the conception of Christ also shared. At 
last, Roman Catholicism invented the Virgin and added 
her to the Godhead. We cannot do that; but if we 
want to correct our idea of God, and to ennoble it, one 
of the first things we have to do is to add to it all the 
noble characteristics of womanhood. Take the distinct 
elements which belong to that, and which are for ever 
different from those that belong to manhood, and, 
making the necessary abstractions, add them to your 
growing conception of God. Fix your mind on this, 
even for one week, and you will be delighted to find 
how much your conception of God will grow in breadth, 
in nobility, in completeness, — amazed to find how much 
you have omitted from it, into how many mutilated, 
harmful, and even base ideas of him you have fallen 
by conceiving him through only half of Humanity. 

To go still further on the same path, men have con- 
ceived God as having the characteristics which belong 



THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 



51 



to different periods of Man's life. In formative art, in 
poetry, in the visions of the heart, he has been repre- 
sented to the imagination of men as a man in the prime 
of life when they desired to conceive him as fulness 
of intellect and power, as eternal and strong old age 
when they wished to conceive him as the fulness of 
eternal wisdom; and of both these modes we have 
examples in the Bible. That which the poets and artists 
have done in this way, we ourselves do continually in 
our thoughts, as different experiences and trials lead us 
to imagine God differently; and in this way, in this 
twofold effort, they and we have certainly developed 
into greater variety the spiritual and intellectual idea 
of the Supreme. But one representation of him has 
been omitted or but very rarely touched; and it is this 
which I shall lay before you to-day, with all the thoughts 
connected with it. 

I cannot recall any instance in which God has been 
conceived as the Eternal Child, in which the attributes 
of such perfect youth and childhood as we can shape 
in our thought have been added to our idea of the 
Highest. This we need to do, and this is suggested to 
us by the childhood of Him who was the express image 
of the Father. 

The first sight we have of God revealed in Man is 
God revealed in Christ the Child. The second is of God 
revealed in youth, when, after twelve years, we find 
the Saviour in the Temple; and, looking up from the 
Revealer of the Infinite God to the Infinite One himself, 
we conceive the glorious elements of perfect childhood 
and perfect youth as existing in him, and we do so with 
a reverence which takes into itself a great and dear 
delight. 



52 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



Iii that exquisite unconsciousness of self which belongs 
to childhood, and which adorns it with the beauty of 
an eternal morning, we recognize one of the elements 
of the Divine Perfection. Though all his works are 
known to him from the beginning, yet they are known 
without any work of the reflective faculty, such as we 
possess, upon them. They have not been thought out 
nor thought upon. They are done at once, — thought, 
act, and will being as one, — no passing from one to the 
other, no meditation, no sense of the possible or the 
imj)ossible, — infinite wisdom and power acting as a child 
acts. 

We are wearied with a thousand thoughts and ques- 
tions. We have to build up our acts in meditation; 
we ask whether they are right or wrong, wise or foolish, 
whether they are likely to fail or succeed, whether 
our motive is selfish or unselfish, whether the end is 
noble or worth the pains, whether we shall reach an 
end at all: at every step, we are self-conscious. In the 
child there is nothing of that. In God there is nothing 
of it. And with its absence is perpetual blessedness, 
impossibility of weariness, intensity of life, and I believe 
the very dejDth of personality. For by this absence 
of self-consciousness the child throws itself into the life 
of all it loves and sees and hears. Things are living 
to it which are dead to others. It lives in the most 
wondrous worlds of tale and fancy, and they are real to 
it; and wholly absorbed in this life other than its own, 
and loving it with all its heart, it possesses that personal 
life in its fulness which we want, which we only reach 
now and then in those rare moments of deep passion, 
When love of some great thought, or of ideal truth or 



THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 



53 



beauty, or of man or woman, have made us wholly forget 
ourselves, and live in the life of the universe or in the 
lives of men. 

This is the essence of God's life, — life in the life of 
all things and souls which have flowed from him; no 
single attribute of his being felt or known within him- 
self, but felt and known in that and those whom he has 
made the outward form of his thought and spirit, so 
that God's life is that intensity of love which loses self, 
to speak humanly, in that which it creates and loves. 

And that is the deepest root of what we mean by 
God's personality. It is in those rare moments when 
we have passed utterly beyond our own circle of self 
that we feel most a person, most a distinct and living 
soul. God has that glorious sense of Being at every 
moment of his infinite existence, never shadowed for 
an instant by what we should call a return into our- 
selves, never lost, as we lose it, when, after losing self, 
self leaps up within us and cries, "Where have you 
been away from me, how is it you have forgotten me?" 
Death comes back at the cry, personality seems to slip 
away from us, we ask again " what we are," we doubt 
whether we are or are not ; in fact, we cease to be : we 
take up again the weary task of becoming. 

These are some of the things which belong to the idea 
of the Eternal Childhood of God. Intensity of life, 
depth of personality held in the absence of self-con scious- 
ness. Further, do you not see that such a life can have 
no age, nor ever be older after millions of years have 
gone by than it was millions of years before ? Like the 
child, it has no past, no future : it abides in an ever- 
present ; it looks neither behind nor before ; it has np 



54 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



memory, no prophecy ; it sees all that was and Trill be at 
the same moment, and its infinite knowledge makes it 
forever young. Yes, it seems to me that if, after long 
searching, it were once granted to mortal eyes to see in 
a vision, in that solemn dreamland into which we enter 
once or twice in life, that form which God might afford 
us as a symbol of himself, we should see a child, with 
the awful light of eternity within its eyes and the smile 
of unfathomable joy upon its lips. 

For this idea we add also to our conception of God 
from childhood, — that there is eternal rapture in his 
Being. Our thoughts of God are solemn, sublime, tinged 
often with a certain gloom of solitude : we unconsciously 
link to our thought of his ceaseless work some vain touch 
of weariness, some sense of struggle. It is wise, then, 
to turn to the thought of this eternal youth, which is 
renewed forever in making all things ever new ; which 
sees all things as childhood sees them, with the dew of 
morning on them, without a shade of languor or satiety ; 
which finds in the never-ending creation of new things 
in thought, and in that which men call matter, never- 
ending rapture, — that matchless, radiant rapture which 
we know the shadow of when we create. It is only God 
whose pleasure has never been dimmed by a sense of 
incompleteness in things thought and done; whose de- 
light is endless, because each thing he gives birth to is 
intensely loved by him, — him the Eternal Poet, whose 
poem is, for us, Nature and Human-kind, — him who 
rejoices forever like a child. 

Add to this, and from childhood also, — into whose face 
we look and catch the vision of innocence, — unutterable, 
self-delighting Goodness ; not goodness won, as ours is, 



THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 



55 



by struggle, and bearing on it the stains of sorrow, but 
goodness, spontaneous, necessary, from everlasting to 
everlasting; goodness to which evil is non-existent, 
which knows not and cannot know evil, which does not 
contend with that which we call evil, but sees it as the 
shadow which goodness casts in an imperfect nature, a 
shadow which must pass away when that nature is made 
perfect, — a goodness, therefore, which has all the ex- 
quisite joy of innocence without its ignorance, — all its 
naturalness of life without its foolishness, and without 
its dulness. 

These are some of the thoughts of God we win when 
we think of him as the Eternal Child. And these 
thoughts ought to be dear to us, for so we add charm 
and joy and rapture, and a wonderful hope of glorious 
youth to come, and the feeling of the heart when of a 
dewy morning we walk out in new-born spring, to our 
religion and our life with God. Solemn, grave, and 
stately with many sorrows is our life with the Eternal 
One, when we sit surrounded by long years of trial, sin, 
straggle, painful victory, in the chambers of our own 
heart, looking wearily forward to the long years to come 
in which day by day we shall renew the battle and 
set our face steadfastly to our Jerusalem with Christ. 
Within ourselves, within our memories, our hopes, and 
fears, we seem to worship a God whose first-born is 
sorrow and whose law is trial, even to the breaking of 
all but the last cord of the heart. It seems as if we 
were saved only, so as by fire, in the supreme agony of 
being when it asserts its immortality against the phan- 
tom Death. It is thus looks our religion, our life and 
worship, when we find our God only within the circle of 



56 



FAITH A2sD FREEDOM. 



our own experience. Pass out of that experience now 
and then, see God without the sphere of the thoughts of 
manhood, womanhood, and age, and as within the sphere 
of eternal youth, eternal childhood, — worship him not 
only as the Lord who heals sorrow and forgives sin, and 
brings you back from wandering, but as the ever joyful, 
ever young Delight, whose life is rapture because his 
life is unconscious Love. That will take you somewhat 
out of yourself, make small your sorrows, dip in forget- 
fulness your sins, fill your lips with praise, and put a 
new song in your heart. It makes life happier to con- 
sciously conceive and worship the Eternal Hapjnness. 
It takes away the curse of time to know and love for 
his beauty the Eternal Youth. It refreshes, as with 
the cool rain of the even, the languid meadows of later 
life, where every blade of grass is a thought and every 
flower a feeling, when we realize, in an hour of divine 
inspiration, that there abides for us an eternal childhood 
in the Eternal Childhood of God. 

Lastly, see how much that does for you, how much 
beauty and largeness it adds to your thought of him you 
worship. Take the method and do the same kind of 
work for every period of the life of manhood and 
womanhood, and your thought of God will grow in 
grandeur and in breadth. Pass from the characters of 
ordinary human life to those of the lives of great and 
inspired men and women, ])ersons of genius and power 
and keen feeling and matchless love and victorious holi- 
ness and piercing truth, — the prophets and poets and 
jmilosophers and teachers and healers and saviours of 
the race, — and collect into one thought all the elements 
in them which are highest; pass from individuals to 



THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 



57 



nations, and collect into your thought of one Being all 
the ideas in their world-wide develojDment which the 
national life of all nations has wrought out at large and 
handed down to us ; pass from nations to the whole of 
the human race, see it in its entirety, grasp and con- 
ceive the ideas and feelings which rule it in their most 
universal form; expand them, idealize them into per- 
fection, and, when you have done all in this ascending 
series, add them to your conception of God. Have you 
then conceived him as he is ? No ! no ! but you have 
wonderfully enlarged and ennobled your thought of him. 

Can you go further still? Oh, certainly. Take the 
whole of Nature and all the knowledge you have gained 
of it; see it in its infinite detail, then generalize into 
a few great ideas all that you have learned from the 
detail; pass beyond this earth into the infinite worlds 
of space, — beyond the flaming walls; weary imagina- 
tion with the thoughts which are born in you, as you 
pierce into the ineffable silence and darkness of the 
spaces beyond our star-cluster where other star-clusters 
float, — and add all the ideas you then conceive to 
your concej:>tion of God. Do more; people all these 
worlds with living spirits, different no doubt from us, 
but all at least the same in this, that all think and all 
love. Imagine the countless myriads of spirits which 
live, and all have their source and their end, their 
thought and their love, of God and by him and through 
him, and have you found him yet? No, not so as to 
exhaust him. But you have indefinitely enlarged and 
ennobled your conception, and you know that he whom 
you Arorship is worthy of your worship. 

Then are you at rest. Not because you have done 



58 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



all, not because your conception has attained finality, 
but because you have formed as adequate an idea of 
God as is possible to you, and you know that it will 
continue to expand. Every new extension of knowl- 
edge, eTery new secret science wrests from Nature, 
every new idea wrought into form through the prog- 
ress of man, every new representation of beauty that 
art makes, every new development of human feeling 
and work in every sphere of human activity, will swell 
and dignify your conception of the divine and univer- 
sal One who is also your Father. Till at last you 
will know, in that vivid way in which one does know 
spiritual truth, that such thought and such growth of 
thought about God will be immortal, and form the 
ground of your immortality. It cannot be that this 
mighty Idea, in me, in all my fellow-men, once we have 
possession of it, should die in us; infinitely worthy in 
itself, it makes those who have it infinitely worthy. 
The thought is by itself eternal, and guarantees eternity 
to those who think it. In itself, by its essence, it is 
immortal. I who think it am immortal. It is in God, 
who lives forever. I who think it am also in God for- 
ever. 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAjST, 



1876. 

" That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh 
into the world." — John i., 9. 

These words were written many years after Christ 
had left the earth, and they were written expressly from 
the spiritual point of view. That is, they refer to the 
inward light of Christ's spirit in men's hearts, not to the 
outward light which he manifested through his earthly 
life. The light is the divine indwelling of Christ's spirit 
in the soul. It belongs, we are told, to every man that 
cometh into the world. It is not given at random or by 
favoritism, as some decide : it is not given at baptism, 
and not without baptism : it is not given through man 
or man's ordinances. All these and similar statements 
are added to the Scriptures. It is simply, we are told, 
the light in every man that is born, — God's light in us, 
the uncreated fountain of all that is true and good and 
beautiful and kind. 

When we grasp a truth, and the exquisite pleasure 
of knowing what is true abides with us like a noble 
guest ; when we conquer a selfish or worldly desire, and 
lie down to rest on the goodness we have won, and feel 
at peace; when in the golden summer time we pass 



60 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



through the happy woodland, and hear the stream and 
the trees talk to one another, and the beauty that flows 
into the eyes and ears kindles its instructive fire in our 
hearts ; when we give love or pity or kindness to those 
that need it, and the quick thrill of heavenly joy, such as 
the shepherd feels when he finds his lost sheep, swells 
the heart, — what is it that we feel? We feel not only 
ourselves, but God within us. His is the truth, the 
goodness, his the beauty and the tenderness, and his the 
joy. He is mingled with us then. His light and life 
make our light and our life. 

And it matters but little as to our possession of this, 
whether we be poor or rich, learned or unlearned, 
commonplace or filled with genius. It is true it is more 
or less in all men, it is of different kinds in different 
men; but it shines in all. One may hold it in a soul 
which is a palace for the crowned Truth to dwell in; 
another may keep it in a soul which is a ruined cabin, 
where many an outlawed thought and many a felon 
feeling dwells. But its eternal fire burns in both, — in 
one as brightly as the sun, in the other dimly as in 
a dying star. None are without the Spirit of God. 
We live and move and have our being because he is 
in us. There is no true life, no true thought, no true 
feeling of which he is not the source and essence. 
Therefore, we know whence we are, and what we are, 
and whither we are tending. We are from God, we are 
of God, and we are going on to deeper union with him. 
Therefore, we know whether we are mortal or immortal. 
As he has wrought himself up with us, we cannot die. 
We are a vital part of his eternal Being. 

When we say these things, we assume the Being 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 



61 



of God and our being in him. We start our whole 
thought and reasoning and feeling on the subject of 
what we are from the belief in God. And we think 
that our own being and that of Nature, and all the 
phenomena of both, are better explained, and that more 
of their facts are explained and correlated by that 
theory than by any other. 

But there are others who hold a different theory, 
and who, desiring to explain and find out what Man is, 
start from Man himself. There are two classes of these 
persons, and they differ widely. 

One is the speculative. They have the poetical, and 
not the practical, disposition. They long for light, not on 
the facts of matter, but on those of thought and feeling. 
" What is the end," they say, " and what the source of 
all I imagine in my brain and heart ? Ideas rise within 
me, and passionate emotions thrill me. I love them 
and pursue them, I win and exhaust their good and joy, 
then they decay and fail. Are they then of the dust, — 
the dust to which my body shall return ? I would fain 
think not. I hear of a God who made me, of a heaven 
and a hell in future ; but I know only myself and the 
earth, and that I suffer and rejoice in the present." 

Then they send their soul wandering into the invisi- 
ble to search for an answer; and it comes back after 
long speculation, bearing no olive-branch, but silent and 
weary, with no reply upon its lips, and they take it in 
and say: "Alas! there is no voice, no light. I, and 
only I, am the centre of the universe. I myself am 
God and Heaven and Hell. God is the name I use 
when I think upon my Fate. Heaven is the image 
I make to myself of my fulfilled desire. Hell is the 



62 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



image I create of my desire, when, powerless to fulfil 
itself, it still goes on craving and consuming. There is 
no reality beyond myself that answers to these names. 
They are but pictures in the dark looking-glass into which 
I gaze when I look outside of myself. I see in it, it 
seems, infinite depths, and far, far away in them dim 
shadows seem to move. But the mirror is only a thin 
surface of my own creation, in which my own self is 
reflected. Itself and its shadows and its depths are all 
my phantasy. And, when I die, the glass is shattered 
and the images. It is nothing, it tells me nothing, be- 
yond it there is nothing. I have come wandering into 
this world I know not why, nor whence. All day long I 
ask what I am and whither I am going, and, when (driven 
by the desolateness of old age and the torment of decay) 
I am asking it most bitterly, I am suddenly struck down 
— and all is over. 

" ' A moment's halt, a momentary taste 
Of Being from the well amid the waste ; 
And lo ! the phantom caravan has reached — 
The Nothing it set ont from. Oh, make haste ! ' 

It is ghastly ignorance, and it were well I could cease to 
torment myself about it. But I cannot. I cannot help 
asking. An inward passion urges me, and it finds its 
food in everything. Never for one moment am I moved 
by a great thought or touched by a deep feeling, without 
this greater and deeper question rising and appealing to 
me for a reply." 

Is there an answer ? Well, we Christians say there is, 
and we find it in the life and words of Christ. If he is 
the representative and ideal of Humanity, and if what he 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 



63 



said of himself as such be true, then these questions are 
answered. The very kernel of the Incarnation is that 
God and Man are at one in Christ, and Christ himself 
said that what he was his brothers were to be, — at one 
with God. It was as Man and as one of us that he said, 
"I and my Father are one." It was as one of us that he 
said, " I came forth from the Father, and am come into 
the world : again, I leave the world, and go to the 
Father." It was as the ideal Man he said, " The Son 
can do nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father 
do, for what things soever he doeth these also doeth the 
Son likewise " ; it was as such he said, " The Father that 
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works " ; and, " My doctrine 
is not mine, but his that sent me." It was as man he 
said, " I must work the works of him that sent me." 

If these things be true of us men as they were true, 
Christ said, of himself, then all your questions are an- 
swered. Whence came you ? You came out from the 
Father. Why are you here ? To work the works of 
him that sent you. What are you ? You are a living 
child of God, one with God, so dwelt in by him that 
your works are his and your doctrine his. Whither are 
you going ? You leave the world, and go to the Father. 

You answer, What right have I to claim for myself to 
be that which Christ was ? I reply : You have the right 
he has given you, the right God has given you through 
him. You are not now wholly what he was : you are 
imperfect, sinful, struggling against error and tempta- 
tion ; but, still, you are at one with Christ, by right and 
through him at one with God ; and by and by, when you 
are wholly redeemed and clean, you shall be in fact that 
which you are now by right. That is what Christ says 



64 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



himself. He had no doubt that ichat he was as Man all 
men who followed him should be. " The glory which 
thou gavest me" — so he speaks, praying to his Father — 
"I have given them; that they may be one, even as we 
are one : I in them, and thou in me, that they may be 
made perfect in one." 

The certainty of that is the revelation of Pentecost. 
The very Spirit of God dwells in the soul of man and is 
his life: he is the light that lighteth every man. Be- 
lieve that truth, and all your life will change. You will 
not need to send your soul into the infinite to find God. 
You will find him in your heart ; and, finding him, you 
will know, far more certainly than you know any fact of 
matter, whence you are and what you are and whither 
you are going. Weary speculation will cease, fruitless 
effort will become fruitful work : all you think and do 
will have an aim, and you will know you shall reach your 
aim. And when, at death, you stand on the peak of the 
mount of life, and earth lies beneath you, sleeping in the 
mist, you shall look up to a radiant Heaven, and cry, 
stretching forth your hands in utter thankfulness and joy, 
" I leave the world and go to the Father, my Father, to 
be at one with him forever, with the light that lighted 
me when I came into the world." 

That, then, is the answer which the Spirit of God in 
Christ gives to the souls that cannot as yet believe, but 
must speculate on life and death and eternity. They are 
speculations that have in them imagination and poetry. 
They stir the emotions of those who make them. They 
are prompted by passionate thought, and they kindle it. 
They bring with them longing which lifts a man above 
the world, and often indignation against God which, in 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 



65 



the stirring it gives the soul, has a reflex action toward 
good upon it. For it is an indignation which soon 
changes into love of God, when the idea of God is 
changed. At least, they keep the man from sinking into 
a mere intellectual machine : they remove him from the 
drudgery into which the desire of nothing else but what 
is called practical brings its followers at last. 

But there is another class of men to-day, who do not 
speculate at all. They do not send their souls out from 
themselves, for they do not believe in anything like a 
soul. " We cannot hold it in our hand," they say, " nor 
prove that spirit is by reasoning." They hear of a Divine 
Light and Life and Spirit in them, whom men call God ; 
and they say that they do not feel it, and do not care to 
feel it. They will not speculate on subjects to which 
they see no end, and of which they know no beginning. 
The feelings on such subjects are blind guides, and they 
dim the dry light in which they wish to work. They 
allow the existence of conscience as now felt, they allow 
the existence of the religious feeling in man, of love and 
aspiration and desire for continued life ; but they do not 
allow that these are sjuritual powers that have an exist- 
ence of their own, derived to us from a Spirit who loves 
us and gave us being. They stick to facts, as they say ; 
and the only way to find what men call the soul, and the 
feelings it is said to possess, is to look for them in the 
vessels and the nerves and the matter of the brain, and 
in the movements of their atoms, and they grope for 
them in the decay of the dissecting-room and in the tort- 
ured tissues of animals. "We have not found the soul," 
they cry : " it is not there." 

No, indeed it is not ; and you will never find it there. 



66 



FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 



Life is not found in death : you will not touch the incor- 
ruptible in the corruptible. You may find movements 
correlative with thought, but not the moving ]30wer of 
thought, — movements correlative with the desire of God, 
but not the source of the movements or of the desire. 
Never, never will you find that in the ceaseless clash of 
atoms. 

Then, as to conscience and the sense of religion and 
belief in immortality, they must be sought at their origin 
in animals, and in their slow growth through selected 
movements of matter which become habitual and heredi- 
tary. There, in the far past and in their Aveakest devel- 
opments, we shall find out what conscience and religion 
and intellect and love truly are. And these men have 
made their theories, and they are not pleasant ones. But 
whether they are pleasant does not much matter, if they 
accounted for the facts. But it is safe to say that at 
present they do not explain conscience or genius or the 
love of a cause or even the love of man and woman. 

And we who look on ask, with some wonder, whether 
it would not be a more rational method of finding out 
what conscience and genius and love are in men, if we 
were to study them in their most perfect and highest 
form rather than in their imperfect and lowest. No one 
denies that they have developed from faint origins, but 
their origins will be better known, if we begin to study 
them from what they are now. 

Look at conscience as it rises in Luther, when he stood 
alone against the world of his time, and clung to truth 
in the face of death. Look at genius, when it speaks in 
Shakespeare's tragedy, when it fills the heart in a mas- 
ter's music. Look at love, when in Christ it sacrifices the 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 67 

whole of life for the sake of the vast conception of bring- 
ing the whole race to God ; look at love even in yourself, 
when you are thrilled with the beauty of the world, 
when you feel that you would gladly die for the maiden 
of your choice: and then ask yourself if you can conceive 
these things to be only the product of the weaving or the 
clash of atoms, — if they have come to this height and 
power and majesty and immortality, to this oneness with 
a beauty and a truth which you are forced to conceive as 
higher than they, by the slow selection of advantageous 
atomic movements. 

It is when most distressed with the noise of those 
who bray the love and thought and conscience of men 
in the mortar of their analysis that in a pause of their 
unmusical toil we hear with exquisite delight these 
ancient words: "In him was life; and the life was 
the light of men. That was the true Light, which 
lighteth every man that cometh into the world." For 
at least the truth in them is an adequate cause for the 
results we observe. It accounts for the vast phenomena 
of the moral, spiritual, imaginative, and passionate ele- 
ments in man. The other theory does not account for 
them, is utterly inadequate to the facts. 

Conscience is not the growth of human judgments 
alone: it is the voice of an Eternal Right within us, 
which comes to us from a living Righteousness without 
us. Its source in Eternal Right is beyond Humanity: 
it is throned in the Being of God forever. When 
we have put aside some wrong with a mighty effort, 
and feel, after the first agony, the high sense of noble 
conquest, the deep joy within us is not only that we 
have won our own approval : it is the joy of being 



68 



FAITH AND EEEEDOM. 



nearer to the eternal Goodness who loves us, of feeling 
that he himself has wrought with us in the conquest. 
When we are conscious of the strong bitterness of 
remorse, it is not only that we have sinned against 
man that tortures us: it is that we have exiled our- 
selves for a time from the Father of our spirits. "O, 
cleanse thou me," Ave say, "from my secret faults." 
"Father, I have sinned against thee." And in that 
conviction lies our truest chance of repentance, our 
best ground for repairing the evil we have wrought 
against our fellow-man. 

Genius is not the happy conjuncture of material 
elements in a man. It is the breath of the intellect of 
God, the thrill of God's heart in us, the inspiration of 
his beauty. When the poet creates, it is the creative 
Spirit of God that breathes into the men and women 
whom he makes, and bids them live and love. When 
the artist paints, the soul in his picture that speaks to 
us is the living beauty and love of God. When the 
musician makes the heart j> a i u t a hundred images of 
man and Nature, and gives to each image its own troop 
of emotions, it is the changing, feeling Spirit of God 
that changes and feels within us. 

Love is not the pleasant thrill of atomic movements, 
repeated till they become fixed in a certain direction. 
Love is God himself in us, as the desire of good. It 
is the longing after pure happiness in others. It is the 
desire of beauty, in God, in Nature, in man or woman. 
It is the generative, productive, creative power in us. 
Its power is itself the Word of God in us; and we may 
truly say of it, in all its noble forms in us, what John 
said of the perfect love of God, "All things are made 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 



69 



by it, and without it is not anything made that is 
made." For God is love, and where it is true in us it 
is God in us. "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in 
God, and God in him." 

Yes, these things are true; and it is great joy to 
know and feel that every good and perfect gift cometh 
down from the Father of Lights, with whom is no 
variableness, neither shadow of turning. For then we 
know these things shall not die. The right we strug- 
gled for and won is not lost in the grave. It is ours 
in God, a treasure laid up for us in the righteous world. 
The beauty and intellect and noble passion which genius 
threw into form do not decay with our dust, and enter 
into the unconscious being of the rocks and trees. They 
abide and grow forever in us and for us, adding beauty 
to beauty, thought to thought, feeling to feeling, and are 
expressed forever in more and more perfect form. And 
Love is above all immortal. Our childish love of God, 
the early praise of joy we gave him, our later desire of 
good, our longing to know his peace, — this does not die. 
God, who is its life, has made it move in us, keeps it in 
our hearts from dying, touches us through it into effort, 
and leads us by it at last to fulfil our true life in unbroken 
love of him. Nor does our human love die. It has its 
defect and its excess, its glory and its folly, its constancy 
and its failure : the Subjects of it may lose their hold on 
us, but all that has been nobly felt and truly thought in 
it endures ; and it will purify itself in us, and we shall 
know by and by that it was of God. 

Nor does death divide us from love, or from the pity, 
the passion, the forgiveness which we have to give or to 
receive, the longing for, or the peace of finding those 



70 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



who have gone away. For God's Spirit is in the living 
heart that waits for us, and in ours ; and its unity makes 
our unity. The light in which those who have gone 
away abide is the same that abides in our hearts, and 
that light is the light of love. Oh, desolate indeed is he 
who in the hour of some wild sorrow, when life cra>]it < 
round him, and earth has nothing left to give, has no 
belief in hearts that wait for him in a kinder and more 
peaceful world, who sees nothing in the dead but dust, 
who looks for the heart that beat for him, and the eyes 
that he gazed into to find comfort, and the hand that- 
made his support, only in the grass that waves above the 
grave or the wind that hurries by that haunted resting- 
place. But there is some joy even in bitter pain, some 
comfort which we know will arise ere long and sit with 
us hand in hand, when we think that the all-indwelling 
spirit of God's Love moves in us, and in the husband, 
the wife, the children, the brothers, sisters, and friends 
that have passed beyond the grave. 

These, then, are some of the human aspects which the 
revelation of to-day presents to our hearts, weary with 
speculation, still more weary of the claim of science — of 
some science at least — to rob us of our hopes, to par- 
alyze our faith in the immortality of the heart, the con- 
science, and the intellect. 

If, then, these things be true, — if there be a sj)irit of 
goodness, of genius, and of love ; if that spirit be God's 
Spirit, and he abide in us, our true and faithful Light in 
this dark world of sorrow, failure, and decay, — what is, 
what ought to be, our daily life and effort ? It is to walk 
worthy of him who dwells in us, to resist his effort in us 
no longer, to throw ourselves into union with his right- 
eousness, his ideas, and his love. 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 



71 



"What are they? What do we know of God's good- 
ness, his thoughts, his love? We know them through 
the life and work of Christ our Saviour. The Spirit in 
us is the same Spirit that was in him, and the work the 
Spirit does in us is to awake in us the remembrance and 
the imitation of Christ. " The Comforter, which is the 
Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he 
shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your 
remembrance whatsoever I have done unto you." 

The Goodness we are to pursue and make our own is 
the goodness of Christ, the same fair human goodness 
that breathed and inspired, labored and endured in the 
Holy Land, that since then has lived in all the good and 
pure of earth. It was a very simple goodness : no one 
can mistake it ; the poorest and most ignorant may 
understand and follow it. It was loving-kindness and 
sweet gentleness, and the healing of sickness and sor- 
row ; it was purity of heart and belief in the goodness 
of men; it was truth, and such love of truth as the 
world has not seen again ; it was the giving of truth to 
all ; it was the glad acknowledgment of truth wherever 
he found it; it was the abiding of all his life in his 
Father, so that his thoughts were his Father's thoughts, 
his work and his whole being God's work and being ; it 
was unbroken communion with Divine Righteousness, 
and the unbroken effort to make the communion he pos- 
sessed with God the possession of men. There, I say, 
is our ideal. That is what the inward Light in us is 
striving to accomplish in us. 

And in intellect, genius, the work of thought, what 
does God's Spirit in us mean for us? The answer is 
also in his life who has given us the Spirit. What was 
the work of his genius ? It was not the pandering to a 



72 



FAITH A^ T D FBEEDOM. 



popular cry, not the astonishing of the world, not the 
desire of applause, not the sacrifice of gifts to the win- 
ning of money, not the solitary pleasure of increasing 
knowledge or of refining feeling. It was the firm con- 
ceiving of great ideas, useful for the human race ; it was 
the shaping and rounding of these into instruments that 
men could use for the advance and saving of the world ; 
it was the entirely faithful and resolute working out of 
these in life, it was death for them at last ; it was belief 
in their immortality and joy, in their resurrection in men 
and nations, that had seemed to lose them, in their eter- 
nal abiding in men by his Spirit. 

It was not only the conceiving of thoughts, but the 
creating of men. Christ made new men by the power 
of intellect. He used, that is, all the power thought 
gave him for the purpose of making useless and dead 
characters into living and useful ones. He was the 
artist of men. He saw what their intellect, feeling, pow- 
ers, and senses could become. He saw the work they 
were capable of, and his art-work was to bring men to 
the ideal God had of them. It was true creation, and 
no phrase is truer than this: "If any man be in Christ, 
he is a new creature." Or this, which more fully ex- 
presses the thought : " Created in Christ Jesus unto good 
works, which God hath before ordained that we should 
walk in them." 

That is the work of his spirit in us, and that should be 
our work among men. Whatever thought or ]30wer of 
thought God has given us should first of all be given to 
these two things, — the conceiving of ideas useful for the 
true progress of man, and the work of bringing those 
we meet up to the ideal that God has of them, the crea- 
tion of new men. 



THE LIGHT OF GOD IK MAN. 



T3 



And, lastly, what is the love which the Spirit calls on 
us to have and to live by? That is contained in a few 
words of Christ: "Love one another as I have loved 
you." It is no longer the statement of the old law, 
"Love your neighbor as yourself": it is "Love your 
neighbor as Christ loved you," — that is, far, far more 
than yourself, more than your joy, more than your peace, 
more than your wealth, more than your knowledge, 
more than your hopes, more than your life. Die for the 
sake of others. What can be added to that? It is 
that and nothing else that God's Spirit asks of you. 
But it is not without its reward, — ■ not a selfish reward, 
not the wild hapjDiness of earth, not anything which will 
make you love yourself. It is the Teward, or, rather, not 
the reward, but the necessary fruit of the seed you sow. 
It is union with the life of God, union with immortal 
love. It is to be at one with the spirit of the love which 
says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive"; it is 
to be able through love to lose yourself in living union 
with all that has beauty in Nature, with all that has 
nobleness in man, with the whole universe of God, with 
God himself. Oh, what life shall then be ours, — life 
which, in losing self, finds itself in union with the ever- 
beating Life which makes, as it beats with love, the 
whole creation! And what light! At last, the light 
within us, hidden now, and dimmed too often by our 
sin and failure, shall become the light in which our 
whole being shines and lives. The Sun of Righteous- 
ness, the Sun of intellectual Truth, the Sun of perfect 
Love, — these three will mix their glory into one, and in 
it we shall abide, — conscience, mind, and heart illu- 
minated and illuminating, eternal light our own, for God 
is ours forever. 



THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 



1876. 

" The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." — 
Revelation xxii., 21. 

It is the last text in the Bible, and it fits well the last 
day of the year. It is well we should take a blessing to 
ourselves, or at least try to fancy that it may be ours, for 
we need it sorely on this day. It may have been a year 
of happiness to some of you, and I would gladly think 
so; for, in the troublesome world in which we live, the 
best hapjnness j)ossible to us is to know that happiness is 
a reality. And those of you whom God has made happy, 
and who have been worthy of your happiness, ought to 
be very thankful to him, and should cherish the memory 
of your happiness and lay it by in a treasure chamber, 
that, when the evil days come, you may look at it and 
say, "Then, I had joy, and I can taste its sweetness still: 
I have failed, but my ]Dast delight receives me into an 
everlasting habitation." Therefore, be grateful for your 
joy, and keep it well. It has been a blessing ; but, though 
you have been blest, you will be none the worse for a 
heavenly blessing such as I lay to your hearts to-day out 
of this sacred book. For surely all earthly bliss is made 
more beautiful if we can link it to the grace of the Lord 
Jesus. 



THE GRACE OP JESUS CHRIST. 



75 



It may have been a year of misery to some of you. 
You may have lost out of your life one who made all its 
delight and all its interest, whose sharing in your work 
made that work worth doing, whose sharing in your life 
lifted it above dull commonplace, in whom were hid years 
of associated and loving memory. And now your work 
is done only because it is duty, and your life lived only 
because it is cowardly to die. Or it may not be loss of 
love, but loss of your best self that has made the year a 
misery. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
world and lose himself ? It is a greater misery even than 
loss of one whom we have loved, to look back and feel 
that in the months gone by some quality, some hoj3e, some 
belief, has been lost out of the character which can never 
be restored to it. Something else may be gained in the 
future, but not that : something better may be gained, 
but your old companion, which made you so happy or so 
good, is dead. Again and again in life, irreparable losses 
take place. The door is shut, and its clang-to sounds 
like the voice of doom itself. 

While, then, you are shut out in the darkness, and 
before another door opens, beyond which you may find a 
new light, and gain a new power in yourself which will 
give energy to life and fulness to character, your time is 
a time of misery. It will be well for you who are now 
suffering this, to whom this year closes in that pain, if 
you have the heart or the right to think upon this bless- 
ing. Some of you may do so even now ; and the grace 
of Christ may be already giving you, through its tender 
influence, the power to lead a new life. Oh, throw your 
whole soul into union with it, and seek the blessedness of 
a life with him ! Others may feel that as yet they have 



76 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



neither part nor lot with him, that they have no right to 
his gracious kindness, or they may be too storm-tossed in 
their hearts to be able to realize that peace can ever come 
again. I bid them not despair. There is only one irre- 
mediable sin. It is the sin of Judas. It is despair of 
forgiveness. Despair of forgiveness! It is irrational. 
For how much do we forgive ; and shall not God, who 
is greater than we, forgive more than we do? Take the 
blessing even with all but a hopeless soul. Lay it like 
healing dew on your heart, and ere long it will do its 
work. 

But, after all, most of you, as you look back, do not 
see unmixed joy or unmixed sorrow in the year so nearly 
gone. Life is, for the most part, a varied web. It is 
woven of glow and gloom, thunder purple and shining 
gold. Even in the midst of our darkest days, deep joy 
rushed in ; even that which we now most sorrow for 
had in it, when we lived in it, inexplicable pleasure. 
Often, as we look back, that which was our happiness in 
hours gone by — so strangely mixed is life — is now our 
tragedy, and that which was our tragedy is now our 
blessedness. And, on the whole, the greater number of 
us have more joy than sorrow, though in the weight of 
sorrow Ave forget the multitude of joy. For sorrows 
keep together, while joys are dispersed through life, and 
in the centre of sorrow we cannot recall the joys that 
are scattered all over the circle of life. Think a little 
less of your sorrows and more of your jo} T s on this day. 
For the joys will make you grateful, and gratitude is in 
itself one of the most beautiful pleasures of the soul. 
And, being grateful, you can take this blessing to your- 
self and make it yours ; for part of the grace of the Lord 
Jesus is to have a grateful heart. 



THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 



77 



It is well, then, this day to seek a blessing. For, in- 
deed, unless one is very young and very strong, and little 
worn by life, we need some blessing. Dwell as we will 
on the brighter side of things, life is very hard, and men 
and women are hard on one another, and we ourselves 
are growing hard, and that is the worst of all. We need 
something to soften, in no enfeebling way, the hardness 
of life and of men and of our own heart. And most of 
the blessings we seek of our own will weaken our souls, 
and in the weakening make us harder in the future. But 
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, if we could win it 
and take it, softens all things by making us stronger 
toward goodness and truth, and righteousness and love. 

What is it? What is his grace? That is our study 
to-day. Whatever it is, it does not come from one who 
is ignorant of all we need. He has known to the full 
the weight of human suffering, and the blessing of his 
grace that is with us is brought home to us by that 
knowledge. He can comfort because he knows. He 
has known what tenrptation is, and can feel with the 
agony of our resistance, and through that with our 
weakness. He has not known remorse or the loss of 
good ; but, through his infinite pain in contact with sin, 
and his infinite pity for those enthralled by it, he can 
understand our unhappiness in guilt. By knowledge of 
sorrow, he can bring blessing to sorrow. 

Nor has he known joy less. In early life, as boy and 
youth, he knew all our simple and pure joys. In man- 
hood, when he first went out to the world, we have 
often traced the joy of enthusiasm in his work. In 
later days, these only lived in memory ; but another joy 
took their place, — the mighty joy of universal love, the 

i 



78 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



joy of giving up all things for all men, — that wonderful 
and mystic joy which we faintly realize whenever, out 
of the depths of personal suffering, we rise into the glo- 
rious life of self-surrender because we love. In that joy 
of Christ's, all suffering died ; and he who reached thus 
the uttermost human joy can, through knowledge of it, 
give us the blessing of joy. But his fitness to give 
comes not only of knowledge of our need, but also of 
his victory over all that is evil or weak in our need. He 
overcame, through holy will and through love of others, 
sorrow, temptation, and sin, went through their depths 
and came forth their conqueror. It is the Victor who 
can give grace and strength to those whom the same foes 
attack. That gift is not in the victim's power. He who 
lets himself be enslaved by the pains of life, he who 
allows sorrow or sin to make him effortless, can never 
give or do good to others. No more than a coward 
can inspire the war can he inspire or help his fellow- 
men, and that is his worst jmnishment and his worst 
degradation. Christ can give inspiration, can bless, and 
give of his power because he mastered the evil forces of 
life. None have ever done that so completely, but 
many can do it in his spirit. And those who do can 
help and bless their fellows in proportion to their vic- 
tory. Remember that this day, you who are in warfare 
with pain or guilt. You will be able to bring grace 
and blessing to others in the future, whatever your pain 
be now, if you conquer it. And, in order to conquer, 
win his grace who has conquered, and who will give it 
to you. 

That grace is, first, kindness, the good-will of love. It 
is usual to speak of the grace of Christ as a spiritual gift 



THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 



79 



which is communicated to us, as the favor and good-will 
which he bestows. But though that way of looking at 
the term " the grace of Christ " is true enough, yet it 
forgets, or keeps out of sight, the fact that, to give it, he 
must have it ; and the first thing at least we are to look 
to, and the thing which is usually left out, is the grace 
of Jesus Christ himself. It was his own before it is 
ours. The first meaning of the words then is " the lov- 
ing-kindness which belonged to Christ, which formed 
part of his character, be with you, and form part of 
yours." And that is a much more practical way of 
talking, and more to be understood, than speaking of a 
kind of vague supernatural gift the exact sense of which 
we cannot understand. 

What that loving-kindness, that grace, was, lies before 
you in his life. It is old, simple, gracious human love 
raised to its greatest height and tenderness. It is the 
showing forth of all those sweet and beautiful qualities 
which make home and social life so dear, and the show- 
ing forth of them in perfection. It is the filial tender- 
ness which laid down the consciousness of genius and all 
its impulses for thirty years at the feet of his mother in 
a quiet and silent life, and which won her pondering and 
passionate love. It is the penetrating love which saw 
into the character of his friends, and made them believe 
in their own capacity for greatness, which led men like 
Peter and John and James to find out and love one an- 
other, which bound his followers together in a love that 
outlasted death. It is the tender insight which saw into 
the publican's heart, which, when the sinner drew near 
in tears, believed in her repentance and exalted her into 
a saint, which had compassion on the multitude and on 



80 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the weariness of a few, which wept over Jerusalem and 
over Lazarus, which never failed to strike the right 
chord even with souls so ignorant as the woman of Sa- 
maria, which in all human life and the movement of its 
passions and hopes and faiths did, said, and thought the 
loving and just thing at the right moment, without do- 
ing or saying the weak thing. Think of it all, you who 
know the story; and an image of the grace of Christ as 
loving-kindness will grow before your soul. And it will 
be strange if you do not, ravished with the sight, say: 
" Let that blessed power be mine in life. May the grace 
of the Lord Jesus be with me." It is no theological 
mystery which you ask for then : you ask that he may 
give you his strong and tender human love; you ask 
not that he may give you something new, but that he 
may strengthen and ennoble all that you know is most 
beautiful in your nature and most likely to make you 
beautiful toward your fellow-men. It is a blessed thing 
to ask for and to live for in the coming year, for it will 
make your life a blessing. 

But there is more in it than this. Human love, left 
alone, sj)ends itself only on those near to us, or on those 
that love us in return, and„in its form of kindness and 
pity, on these whom we compassionate. Kept within a 
narrow circle, it tends to have family or a social selfish- 
ness. Given only to those who suffer, it tends to become 
self-satisfied. To be perfect, it ought to reach, through 
frank forgiveness, those who injure us; through inter- 
est in the interests, ideas, and movements of human prog- 
ress, those who are beyond our own circle, in our nation, 
nay, even in the world ; and finally all men, those even 
who are our bitterest foes, through desire that they 
should have good and be good. 



THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 



81 



It was the very glory of the grace of Christ, as love, 
that it rose into this wonderful height and universality. 
No act for his truest friend or mother was more intense 
in feeling than that act in which he laid down his life for 
his enemies. No love for John or Peter was greater 
than the love which devoted his whole life to the salva- 
tion of the world, of men of whom he knew nothing per- 
sonally. There was, then, a motive power behind his 
natural human love, which lifted it into a diviner region, 
which made it Godlike in forgiveness, Godlike in its 
rush out of the particular into the universal. What was 
that motive? If we can find it, we shall know the 
very root and inspiration of the grace of Christ. It 
is easy to find. It is written in everything he said, but 
nowhere is it written more clearly than in the first words 
of his Prayer. When he taught us to pray "Our Fa- 
ther," he told us that it was his conviction that all men 
were children of God, and that necessarily all were broth- 
ers one of another. It was easy for him to forgive a 
brother, even were he an enemy. It was easy for him to 
die for unknown men, if they were brothers. Christ felt 
it to be an utterly beautiful and joyful thing to love the 
sons of God, — the sons of him from whom he drew his 
mission, to whom he owed his love, from whom came 
all the souls for whom he died. All men were infinitely 
precious and divine in Christ's sight, for he saw them 
all consciously and unconsciously going into the out- 
stretched arms of God. Therefore, he could not help 
loving them all. 

That is the grace of Christ,— the loving-kindness of 
Jesus, — the human love raised into the divine without 
losing one touch of its humanity, save only as light is 



82 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



lost in greater light. I pray that this grace of Christ 
be with you all, — the grace of natural love lifted into 
divine and universal love through faith in the Father- 
hood of God. It is Christ's to give because he had it, 
and when we have it we can give it also. Gain it and 
give it, and you will be blessed and a blessing. 

Secondly, grace has another meaning other than lov- 
ing-kindness. It means the kind of beauty we express by 
the word " charm " ; and in this sense we may translate 
the text, " The beautiful charm of Christ be with you 
all." It is the sense in which a Greek would have loved 
to take the words, and they truly bear that meaning. 
What was that charm ? It was that of harmony of char- 
acter, the musical subordination and accord of all the 
qualities and powers of his nature, so that the whole 
impression made was one of exquisite and various order 
in lovely and living movement. It is owing to this that 
of all the images of history none is so unique and clear 
and attractive as that of Christ. Its grace in this sense 
is perfect, and that is its inner spirit. 

In outward action, it showed itself in many delicate 
and lovely ways. Its loveliest form is in sensitiveness 
to feeling, — the sensitiveness we find in all his ways with 
men and women. Do you remember how, when the 
world-worn Pharisee exj^ressed his scorn of the sinful 
woman, Christ felt her boundless love, and said, "Her 
sins, which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much " ; 
how, when Mary sat at his feet and was blamed by Mar- 
tha, he alone saw love and rightness of choice in her 
silence ; how, when the rude utilitarian saw waste in the 
extravagant love which lavished on him the precious 
spikenard, he accepted it, not for its extravagance, but 



THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 



83 



for its passion ; how, when Peter had sinned by a three- 
fold treachery, he believed in the repentance, and only 
gave one look of sore and loving rejoroach ; how, when 
he was dying, he provided for his friend a mother, and 
for his mother a son ? What charm, what grace in them 
all ! And their beauty could not stand alone. That 
kind of exquisite sensitiveness flowered through the 
whole of his life with men. It was his grace, and all 
felt its charm. 

Nor is it less seen in his speech than in his act. It is 
impossible always to explain in what j^rfect literary 
charm consists ; but one thing is always true, — it is the 
voice of an inward harmony of character. It is rarely 
found in its perfection, but it is nowhere found so exqui- 
sitely as in the stories and words of Christ. In direct- 
ness, in temperance, in a certain sweet wisdom and 
ordered humanity, and in the beauty that results from 
these, there is nothing in the loveliest Greek work which 
matches the parables of Christ, or such sayings as, " Con- 
sider the lilies of the field, how they grow : they toil not, 
neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, That even 
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these " ; or, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." The charm of 
them is perfect. Do you not know that, had Christ been 
born when Pericles was master at Athens, every Athen- 
ian would have clustered round him to hear his words, 
for the very beauty of them ? Sophocles and Socrates 
would have felt their grace. 

In tninking of him as the Man of Sorrows, in having 
imposed on us by the ascetic that he had no form or 
comeliness, we forget what must have been his irresist- 



84 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



ible charm. In the reaction which Christendom felt from 
that heathen worship of beauty which ended in moral 
deformity, nay, linked beauty to sensualism, the loveli- 
ness of Christ was too long hidden from us : we lost the 
sense of his grace in the meaning which the nobler 
Greek would have given to the term. 

Do not you forget it. Seek the blessing of the charm 
that comes of sensitiveness to the feelings of others, of 
sensitiveness to all that is beautiful, of an inward har- 
mony of nature, and of the expression of that harmony 
in beautiful act and sjDeech. Say to yourselves in this 
sense also, "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with me 
and all." 

And, if we are worthy of it and see it, he will give it 
to us. It is given, indeed, through our seeing it. The 
moment we see loveliness, we cannot help desiring it ; 
and the moment Ave desire it, we begin our effort after 
it. To do this is one of the instinctive j^assions of our 
nature. We wish to be like that which we admire, and 
we no sooner wish for and admire it than we grow like 
to it. And the more like we grow to the beautiful thing, 
the more we desire to be more fully at one with it, till 
out of our love of beauty arises an endless aspiration 
and a pressure toward perfection which we cannot con- 
ceive otherwise than eternal. It is by being beautiful 
that Christ gives us of his beauty, and makes us into his 
image. It is in quite a natural, and not a supernatural 
manner that we are " changed into the same image from 
glory to glory." 

But this is not all, and it needs guarding. So far as 
we have touched this meaning of the grace of Christ, it 
is in the manner of his ways and the form of his speech 



THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 



85 



alone. It is true these outward things sprang out of a 
beautiful spirit ; but to fix our eyes only upon them is to 
become a worshipper of beauty as such, to have only an 
imaginative love for him. And I am not sure that the 
result of that, kept alone, would not be evil. All wor- 
ship of beauty for itself alone has two main evils, and 
the merely imaginative worship of Christ is just as likely 
to lead to them as the worship of the idea of beauty. 
They are, first, absolute revolt from what is dull, ugly, 
harsh, or commonplace ; and, secondly, the subordina- 
tion of morality to beauty. These were the practical 
faults of the Greek " grace," and they are the practical 
faults of our present love of beauty. Our aesthetic or 
imaginative love turns away with pain from the unlove- 
liness of human life, from harsh tasks, from vulgar men, 
from the things that weary us. And it looks first at 
beauty, and then at truth and justice and purity. That 
is not to have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is 
impossible to conceive anything more apart from his life 
than such an isolated devotion to beauty, such an exclu- 
sive and excluding " grace." The grace of the Greek 
was in Christ, but it went further than the Greek. Being 
in union with the essential Beauty of God, and seeing 
God in all things and in all men, it saw traces of the 
divine loveliness everywhere, believed in it and drew it 
forth. His disciples marvelled that he talked so long 
with the dull woman of Samaria ; yet Christ saw fathoms 
deep in her soul the pearl of spiritual beauty, and he 
drew it forth. It is a picture of all the work of his 
grace, in this sense, upon commonplace souls. Nor did 
harsh and unlovely tasks deter him. He sought out the 
diseased, the miserable, the hideous leper, those who 



86 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



were stained with ugly sin. There was such beauty in 
redeeming and soothing and helping them that all their 
unloveliness did not exist to Christ. And he went him- 
self through all the pain and horror of a dreadful death, 
and it became perfectly beautiful to him, because it was 
done in the glowing fire of love. That was the way in 
which his grace and his love of beauty were shown in 
distinction from the grace and the love of beauty which 
stand aside from the unloveliness of things and men. 

Once more, his grace and his love of doing and being 
the Beautiful were not apart from, or greater than, his 
love of and doing of moral things, but coincident with 
them. Nothing which was false or impure or unjust 
was, in itself, beautiful to Christ ; and the first glory of 
his grace and charm was its harmony with righteousness. 
We look at it, then, not only with tenderness, such as we 
feel for loving-kindness, not only with delight, such as 
we feel for beauty, but also with all that earnest approval 
and grave enthusiasm which Ave give to things and per- 
sons who are good. Christ's charm has its root in love, 
and is identical with truth and justice and purity and 
courage. It grasps the hand of the Platonist and the 
Stoic alike, without the vagueness of the one and the 
rigor of the other. And, while it holds to the Epicurean 
so far as the early Epicureans said that pleasure was the 
highest good because goodness was identical with pleas- 
ure, it turns aside from the later Epicureans, and from 
those of our day who put pleasure in beauty first, to the 
loss or lessening of moral goodness. Guarded thus on 
all sides, yet taking in all that is noble in all efforts to 
find the highest good, it was in truth grace in its sense 
of beauty that Christ possessed. 



THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 87 

That grace, so guarded, so complete, pray that it may- 
be with you all, in the year that comes to-morrow. It 
will bless your lives, and it will make of you a blessing. 
It will make you at one with all that is tender, pitiful, 
dear, and sweet in human loving-kindness. It will make 
you at one with all that is sensitive and delicate and 
graceful in manner and speech, and create in you an 
harmonious soul. Men will think your life beautiful, and 
inspiration and effort will flow from it. It will make 
you at one with moral good, just and true and pure. 
And it will take all that is loving in humanity, and all 
that is fair, and all that is moral, and link them to and 
complete them by uniting them to the love of God, and 
to God's love for all men; so that to human love and 
moral love and imaginative love will be added the sjnrit- 
ual love which gathers them all into perfection. 

Therefore, having this inspiration and asi3iration, hav- 
ing the power of becoming blessed in sharing of this 
grace of Christ's, we will put aside the sorrow with 
which we look back on the year, and take up a manlier 
and more resolute strain. Whatever may have been our 
pain, our loss, our failure, our sin, we are not yet dead, 
nor yet lost. And there is much to redeem and much to 
win. "We may yet be blessed, even in a weary life of 
struggle, if we have courage and faith and good-will, by 
union with the grace that belonged to Christ. And, when 
we are so blessed, we may by that grace bless others, 
even though we can not take much of the blessedness to 
ourselves. We can not be happy, but we may be good. 
We may not have peace, but we may win the beauty of 
moral conquest. We may go softly all our years, in 
remembrance of failure and wrong ; but we may at last 



88 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



feel that God lias forgiven us, and that he is making us 
like himself through Jesus Christ and through love of 
his grace. And, having these hopes, we may, on this 
last day of the year, when we stand on the verge of the 
past and future, say with humility and love to each other, 
— for it is beautiful to end the year with blessing, — The 
grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. Amen. 



THE 

INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT 
OF OHEIST. 

1867. 

" Jesus increased in wisdom." — Luke ii., 52. 

The subject on which we are employed is the devel- 
opment of Christ. I spoke last Sunday of Christ's de- 
velopment in childhood, through the influence of out- 
ward nature. Our subject to-day is the intellectual 
development of Christ. 

The first hint which we receive of this intellectual 
development is the story of his journey to Jerusalem. 
We find him in the Temple, listening, and asking ques- 
tions of the doctors; or, in other words, exhibiting him- 
self as possessed of the two first necessities for intel- 
lectual development, — engrossed attention and eager 
curiosity. 

Now, what were the steps by which, we may con- 
jecture, the Divine Child had arrived at this kindling 
of the intellect, and how did these several steps affect 
his character? 

Last Sunday, we endeavored to represent him as 
stirred by the outward scenery of nature to recognize 
what was within himself, and as recognizing in nature 
not the dead and lifeless world, as we conceive it, but 



90 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



a living world, beneath whose outward forms lay spir- 
itual realities. 

Now, communion with nature intensifies the desire of 
communion with man. And it seems to me impossible 
to deny that he who afterward, even in his most solemn 
hours, on the Mount of Transfiguration and in the Gar- 
den of Gethsemane, sought and surrounded himself with 
the sympathy of his three favorite disciples, did not also, 
as a child, seek for human sympathy to share with him 
his childhood's delight in the beauty and solemnity of 
nature. Hence there was strengthened in him love of 
man, arising from love of nature. There was quickened 
in him desire of social communion, desire of seeing his 
own thought reflected by other minds, desire of know- 
ing what other beings than himself both knew and 
thought and did in the world. 

There was not much to gratify these desires in Naza- 
reth. We know the character of the place; and the 
Holy Child must even then have felt the first keen stings 
of that suffering for the sin of the world which made 
him, as man, die to redeem the world. Moreover, a re- 
mote and petty village could supply but little food to 
his awakened and craving intellect. He had soon assimi- 
lated all he could find there of the elements necessary 
to develop his mental powers. I can conceive him 
eagerly looking forward to the day when he should 
accompany his parents to Jerusalem, — not unduly ex- 
cited, not impatient, but nobly curious to see human life 
concentrated in one of its great centres, to watch the 
movement and the variety of the crowd of many nations 
who poured into Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover. 

At last, the hour came, and with the " quiet indepen- 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHBIST. 91 



dence of heart " which he had secured through still com- 
munion with nature, with the deep desire of knowing 
men, and with a deep sense of childlike repose on God, 
the Boy, Christ Jesus, set forth with his company from 
Nazareth. ISTo doubt, according to pious Jewish prac- 
tice, he had been instructed in the history of his people ; 
and now what thoughts were his, as for the first time 
he saw the interior of Palestine, the Jordan rolling deep 
between its banks, the savage landscape of the eastern 
desert ! There was not a spot along the route which 
was not dignified by some association or hallowed by 
some great name. 

Whatever we in youth have felt — for life wears out 
the keenness of receptiveness — when we have stood 
upon some spot made glorious in our country's history, 
whatever thrill of high emotion or rush of noble impulse 
has then come upon us, and swept us out of our narrow 
sphere of childish interests into the wide region of inter- 
ests which cluster round the words, " our country and its 
heroes," came then, we may be sure, upon the Child. A 
larger horizon of thought opened before him. The heroic 
past of Israel became a reality. The sight of places 
where noble deeds were done made the deeds themselves 
real. And not only the deeds, but also the men / for, in 
the years gone by, Hebrew men had here done and suf- 
fered greatly. Here was their theatre : this was Jordan ; 
there was Jericho; there David had passed by; there 
Jacob had set up his rugged pillow. At once, localized, 
impersonated by the landscape, the men of Israel became 
real living personages, the past was crowded with moving 
forms, and History was born in the intellect of Christ. 
The impression must have deepened in him as he entered 



92 



FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 



Jerusalem. He must have felt in heart and soul the 
shock of the great town's first presence. He could not 
walk unmoved among the streets, so vocal with the fame 
of Solomon, the patriotic enthusiasm of Isaiah, the sor- 
row and the passion of Jeremiah. The stones of the 
walls spoke to him, the gates replied ; and, when first he 
saw the mighty mass of the great Temple flashing white 
in the sunlight upon its uplifted rock, what a thrill ! — a 
thrill of that fine excitement, half of sense and half of 
soul, which is almost a physical pain, and out of which 
springs more creative thought than comes afterward to a 
man in a year of that " set gray life " of work which we 
know so well in London. These are the impressions 
which kindle latent intellect, which abide with us as 
living things within the brain, engendering the life of 
thought ; and if ice, cold northern natures, have felt 
these things in our childhood, and at a younger age than 
Christ was now, how must an Oriental child of genius 
(to assume for a moment a ground which the destruc- 
tive critics will not deny) have felt their power on his 
intellect ? 

Look at another point. 

As he drew near to Jerusalem in this journey, various 
troops of pilgrims must have joined their company. He 
saw for the first time the great diversity of the human 
race. Accustomed to one type alone at Nazareth, and 
that a limited type, for Nazareth was an outlying village, 
— and a somewhat degraded type, for Nazareth had a 
bad reputation, — he was now brought into contact with 
many types of men. 

The same kind of result, we may conjecture, was pro- 
duced upon his intellect as is produced when a boy is 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF C HEIST. 93 



first sent out of the narrow circle of home into the 
varied human life of a public school. The impression 
which is then made upon the intellect of a boy is one of 
the most productive which he receives in life. The im- 
pression made upon the mind of Christ must haA^e been 
of equal depth at least, probably far greater ; for, first, 
we know from his after life that his intellect was of the 
mightiest character, and, secondly, the variety which met 
him was greater than that with which an English boy is 
brought into contact. Thus, it was not only the realiza- 
tion of the past through the power of association which 
stirred his intellect : it was also stirred by the contact 
with the varied national and individual life of the 
present. 

And then there was that wonderful Jerusalem in 
front where all this variety of life was now concentrated. 
What wonder if the pure, high-hearted Child, with eager 
thoughts beginning to move, looked forward with intel- 
lectual enthusiasm to his arrival among; the throng of 
men? 

More and more, it is plain, the vast idea of Humanity 
must have unfolded itself within him during the journey. 
Then came, to complete and fix this idea, the rush and 
confusion of the great multitude in Jerusalem during the 
Feast, — men of every nation under heaven in the streets; 
strange dresses, strange faces. There was the Roman 
soldier, grave, and bearing in his face the stamp of law 
and sacrifice ; there was the acute Greek countenance, 
the heavy Egyptian features, the volu]3tuous lip and 
subtle glance of the Persian, the wild Arab eyes. Every 
face was a mystery, and the greatest mystery of all was 
the wonderful world of men. 



94 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



What kindles thought like this, — the first rush upon 
the brain of the idea of the diversity of humanity ? 

It is an idea naturally conceived by a boy. We do 
not impute to Christ, at this time, the thoughts which 
arise from it, too numerous to mention. But we find it 
here in its origin; and in the silent time to come in Naza- 
reth it worked in his intellect, producing its fruit of 
thought from year to year. Do we trace it in his min- 
istry? "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold : 
them also I must bring." " Many shall come from the 
East and West." " Go ye into all the world, and preach 
the gospel to every creature." 

There is another intellect-awakening thought correl- 
ative to this of the diversity of humanity, which I can- 
not but think was first stirred now in the mind of Christ, 
— the thought of the unity of the race. 

There was one spirit predominant in all the pilgrims to 
the Feast. They came ivp to Jerusalem, diverse as they 
were, inspired by one thought, to perforin one common 
worship, in one jilace, to one God. It was the form in 
which the national unity of the Jewish people had been 
of old embodied. But now hundreds of other nations 
had received the Jewish religion as proselytes. Christ, 
therefore, saw not only the Jews, but Gentiles, united by 
the worship of a universal God. We do not say that he 
clearly conceived the thought of the oneness of human- 
ity at the age of twelve, — it was probably too large for 
his normal development, — but we do say that there is 
nothing unnatural in believing that the germ of it was 
then first quickened into life. Now there are few 
thoughts which more than this promote intellectual de- 
velopment. We may imagine it slowly growing into 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 95 

fulness during the maturing years at Nazareth, till at last 
it altered its form and became personal. This unity of 
humanity, so broken, so imperfect, — this great idea, — 
where is it realized perfectly? And out of the depths 
of Christ's divine and human consciousness came the 
answer. It is realized in me. All that is human meets 
in me. /am the centre where all the diverse and con- 
verging lines of humanity meet. Jam the race. 

Once more, in tracing the intellectual development of 
Christ in connection with this one glimpse of his history, 
we come to the scene in the Temple. Led there by his 
desire to know, he was brought for the first time into 
contact with cultivated intellects. He heard for the first 
time the acute reasoning of the schools : he realized for 
the first time the vastness of the sea of knowledge. The 
thought of the diversity of the human intellect was ex- 
hibited to him in the diversity of the opinions which he 
heard. He was made acquainted with the j>arties among 
the Jews : with the petrified theology of the scribes, 
with the conventional morality of the Pharisee, with the 
conservative infidelity of the Sadducee, with all the false 
show of religion and the death which lay beneath. There 
he saw 

" Decency and Custom starving Truth, 
And blind Authority beating with his staff 
The Child that might have led him." 

Probably, these were, at first, only impressions ; but we 
cannot doubt that they produced their fruit at Nazareth. 
For, starting from these experiences, there grew up 
within him that clear comprehension of Jewish life and 
all its opinions and parties, and of the way in which he 



96 



FAITH AND FBEEDOM. 



was destined to work upon them, which comes out so 
wonderfully in his ministry. He did not hear in vain the 
doctors disputing, he did not ask them questions without 
a great intellectual result. 

Such must have been the influence on the intellect of 
Christ of his days in the Temple. It should be delight- 
ful to us to think of him, whom we reverence as Master 
and Lord, sharing thus in our curious childhood, listen- 
ing with engrossed attention, " both hearing them " — 
questioning with eager desire — " and asking them ques- 
tions." It should be a wonderful thought for us to im- 
agine, with love and awe combined, how idea after idea, 
existing there potentially, unfolded their germs under 
this influence in the mind of Christ, — germs which, ma- 
turing, and as they matured generating others, grew up 
during the years of silence at Nazareth, into that per- 
fect flower of intellect which, shedding its living seeds 
over eighteen centuries, has given birth to the great ideas 
which once created, and still create, the greater part of 
the intellectual life of the world. 

We may conjecture that the first impressions in Je- 
rusalem awoke in Christ's spirit the elevated view of 
human nature which we conceive from his after life to 
have been latent in him as a child. But when he came 
to consider classes and individuals, and not the race as a 
whole, — in its idea, — he found hypocrisy, selfishness, 
tyranny, meanness. But the first idea must have re- 
mained firm, coexistent with the other sad ideas which 
followed it. 

Man, then, was great, and man was base; man was 
mighty, and man was weak ; man had a divine nature, 
and man had given himself over to a base nature. But 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. '97 



the greatness, strength, and divineness were his true 
nature : the others were the result of an alien and usurp- 
ing power. Both existed; but the one existed to be 
made perfect, the other to be destroyed. Hence, not all 
the evil Christ came into contact with, not all the blind- 
ness, sin, and cruelty which he saw and suffered from, 
could ever overthrow his divine trust in that which man 
might become. Here was a real spiritual thought bear- 
ing on his mission, — man is capable of being redeemed. 

As his spirit grew more conscious of what it really 
was, he felt that truth — man's capability of being re- 
deemed — not only without, but within himself. How 
could he despair of human nature, when he knew that he 
himself was sinless human nature? His very existence 
as man was proof that man was destined to be perfect. 
Conscious thus, from his own sinlessness, of man's pos- 
sibility of sinlessness, he became conscious, for the same 
reason, of another truth: that he was the destined Re- 
deemer of the race from the usurping power of sin. 
Being pure, he knew he could save the impure ; being 
perfect Life, he knew he could conquer the death of 
man ; being perfect Love, he knew he could cast out of 
the race the devil of self-seeking. Immediately, intui- 
tively, he felt thus: was conscious of himself, first, as 
sinless humanity; secondly, as the Redeemer of human- 
ity from sin. 

We seem, in this way, to see faintly a strange co- 
existence of apparently contradictory ideas within the 
spirit of Christ during his life at Nazareth. One would 
almost think that that impression of the greatness of the 
human soul would have been worn out by daily contact 
with the wild dwellers at Nazareth ; and yet with what 



98 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



sort of a spirit did he come forth into the world ? "With 
unshaken trust in human nature, recognizing its evil, but 
believing, as none have ever believed before or since, in 
its nobility, its cap abilities, its infinite power of work. 
It was not only interest in humanity, it was love of 
humanity, love, the "business of his Father." 

We come to that by slow degrees ; rise into that life 
by finding out the wretchedness and death of self, but 
in the Saviour's spirit it rose into being like a floAver 
from a seed already there. It developed itself till it 
penetrated his whole nature with one great spiritual 
thought, " I will give away all my being for the human 
race." 

This love of man, and desire to inrpart life to those 
who needed life, was correlative to another spiritual idea, 
— indignation at evil. It was this which balanced love 
in Christ, and kept it from the weakness of our affection 
and the maudlin sentiment of much of our philanthropy. 
Christ abhorred sin, and saw it in its native darkness. 
There was in him, therefore, an agony of desire to re- 
deem us from it, and a pitying indignation for our des- 
olate slavery. He labored to convince men that they 
did need a deliverer from sin; and when a man, like 
Zacchaeus, felt his selfishness and desired freedom, it is 
wonderful how the Saviour's spirit sprung to meet the 
seeking spirit, clung to it, and poured into it a stream of 
life and faith and hope. But when men, for the sake 
of keeping up an ecclesiastical dominion, for the sake of 
success, for the honor of dead maxims, stopped the way 
of others, gave men lifeless forms, and persecuted the 
Light because it condemned their darkness, how the 
holy anger kindled! As the Child listened to the intol- 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 99 



erance of the Pharisee, the dogmatism of the scribe, and 
the scornful infidelity of the Sadducee, there must have 
sprung up in his heart an instinctive feeling of opposi- 
tion ; and this spiritual wrath at wrong done to the souls 
of men grew and deepened at Nazareth, — as the mean- 
ing of what he had heard in the Temple was made clear 
to him by his after knowledge, — till it culminated in the 
withering denunciations of his ministry. 

Christ returned to Nazareth from Jerusalem, the same, 
and yet how changed, how largely widened and deepened 
must have been his human nature! The thought of 
humanity had now taken a higher place in his mind than 
the thought of nature. The thought of God as the 
Father of man had now succeeded to the thought of God 
as the Life of nature. His own relation to the race grew 
into distinctness. The deeper " knowledge of the world " 
which he had gained made, as if by a subtler sense, all 
the common human life of Nazareth an image of the 
Life of the great world. He saw — being himself the 
Man — in every one he met the great common principles 
of humanity, while he received the inrpress of their dis- 
tinctive characteristics. "Among least things, he had the 
sense of greatest." There was not a word or action of 
other men which did not, as he grew in wisdom, touch a 
thousand other things, and fall into relationship with 
them under the universal principles which, being the 
daily companions of his intellect, linked together in his 
mind the present in which he lived to the past and fut- 
ure of the race. A new interest had arisen within him, 
the interest in humanity, or rather, I should say, a new 
love. It clung to him, it pervaded his whole thought. 
That scene in Jerusalem stamped itself on his memory 
forever. 



100 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



With this human centre of thought, he lived on in 
peaceful solitude in the stillness of the upland town. 
Often, he must have wandered to the summit of the hill, 
when wearied by the petty life of the village, and, as in 
after life, so now, communed in that prayer which is not 
petition, but union deeply felt, with God his Father, and 
seen his life unrolling itself before him — not devised and 
]olanned, but intuitively recognized — as a panorama of 
which death for truth and for love of men was the sad 
and glorious close. But he was not deprived of tenderer 
and more delightful thought. How often must the 
thoughts of his childhood, — of which we spoke last Sun- 
day, — the thoughts developed in him by the beauty of 
his Father's world of Life and Light in nature, have 
come to satisfy and cheer his inward life of thought! 
How often, as the turmoil of the world pressed upon his 
brain, must the stars and mountains and the peace of 
evening have given to him their silent ministrations ! 
How often, as the shadow of his sorrow fell upon his 
heart, must the quiet joy of his Father's order, felt in 
nature, have restored and soothed his intellect ! 

For it were exquisite pleasure to him to pass (with 
full knowledge now of the true relation of man and nat- 
ure) from the contemplation of the weakness and the 
want of life of the human world into communion with that 
living spiritual world of God's activity and peace which 
he saw within the phenomena of nature. This was the 
one deep solitary pleasure of his life. For though, as we 
have said, the thought of humanity, and not the thought 
of nature, was now the pre-eminent thought in his mind, 
— because the redemption of man was his work, — yet 
the more divine thought must always have been the 



INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 101 



thought of nature. His labor was inspired by the former : 
his recreation, joy, and consolation were supplied by the 
latter. 

Brethren, let us part with the solemnizing imagination 
of this, — Christ's silent growth in wisdom in the stillness 
of the retired Galilean village. May it calm our noisy 
lives and our obtrusive interests to realize, if but for one 
dignified moment, the image of the Saviour of the world, 
in whom was now concealed from men the regeneration 
and redemption of the race, — living a forgotten life, but 
ever " voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." 



THE FITNESS OE CHRISTIANITY 
EOR MANKIND-I. 

1871. 

" Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of 
heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and 
sowed in his field : which indeed is the least of all seeds ; hut when 
it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so 
that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." — 
Matt, xiii., 31, 32. 

We are told, in one of the Arabian stories which 
charmed our childhood, of a fairy tent which a young 
prince brought, hidden in a walnut-shell, to his father. 
Placed in the council-chamber, it grew till it encanopied 
the king and his ministers. Taken into the court-yard, 
it filled the space till all the household stood beneath its 
shade. Brought into the midst of the great plain with- 
out the city, where all the army was encamped, it spread 
its mighty awning all abroad, till it gave shelter to a 
host. It had infinite flexibility, infinite expansiveness. 

We are told in our sacred books of a religion given to 
man, which, at its first setting forward, was less than the 
least of all seeds. It was the true fairy tent for the 
spirits of men. It grew till it embraced a few Jews of 
every class ; and men thought, " Now, it will do no more : 
it can never suit the practical sense of the Roman, nor 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 103 

shelter beneath its sway the subtile intellect of the Greek. 
To do one is improbable, to do both is impossible." 
Curious to say, it did both. It made the Roman more 
practical: it made the Greek intellect alive again. 
When Rome fell, and during her long decay, some may 
have said : " This boasted religion may suit civilization, 
but it can never adapt itself to barbarism." But it ex- 
panded in new directions to embrace the transalpine 
nations, and took new forms to suit them with an un- 
equalled flexibility. Soon it covered Europe with its 
shadow; and, in a continent where types of race are 
oddly and vitally varied, it found accej)tance with all. 
It has gone abroad since then, and reached out its arms 
to the Oriental, the African, the American tribes, and 
the islands of the seas. And, however small may have 
been its success at present, there is one thing in which 
it differs from every other religion: it has been found 
capable of being assimilated by all, from the wild negro 
of the west coast to the educated gentleman of India. 
I speak of the teaching of Christ, not of unyielding 
Christian systems; and nothing is more remarkable in 
that teaching than the way in which it throws off, like a 
serpent, one after another, the sloughs of system, and 
spreads undivided in the world, and operates unspent, by 
its own divine vitality. 

Now, it is this extraordinary power of easy expansion, 
this power of adapting itself to the most diverse forms 
of thought, which is one strong proof of the eternal fit- 
ness of Christianity for mankind. This is our subject. 

It has these powers, first, because of its want of sys- 
tem. 

Christ gave ideas, but not their forms. We have one 



104 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



connected discourse of his, and there is not a vestige of 
systematic theology in it. Nay more, many of the state- 
ments are so incapable of being grasped by the intellect 
acting alone, and so ambiguous and paradoxical to the 
pure reason, that they seem to have been sj^oken for the 
despair of systematizers. 

What is one to do with a sentence like this, " Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God " ? We 
cannot make a dogma out of it ; we cannot get it into a 
system ; it breaks down under logical analysis. " What 
is it to be pure in heart?" asks some denning person. 
" Does it refer to general cleanliness from all sin, or free- 
dom from the special sin of unchaste thought ? What 
is it to see God ? Above all, what is God? That ques- 
tion is insoluble, unknowable." 

We cannot call a teaching systematic which in this 
way leaves aside the understanding, unless first instructed 
by feeling, which appeals first of all to certain spiritual 
powers in man which it declares to be the most human 
2)Owers he possesses. Such phrases have no intellectual 
outlines. Purity of heart has nothing to do with the 
region of the understanding : God is not an intellectual 
conception. But, if man has distinctly spiritual emo- 
tions and desires, words like these thrill him like music. 

Indeed, there is a fine analogy to Christ's words in 
music. It is the least definable of all the arts : it appeals 
to emotion, not to reason. Neither you nor I can say 
of that air of Mozart's that it means this or that. It 
means one thing to me, another thing to you. It leaves, 
however, an indefinite but similar impression upon us 
both, — a sense of exquisite melody which soothes life, a 
love of a life in harmony with the impression made, and 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOB MANKIND. 105 



an affection for the man who gave us so delicate an emo- 
tion. So is it with the words of Christ. The under- 
standing cannot define them: the spirit receives them, 
and each man receives them in accordance with the state 
of his spirit. To one, these words, "Blessed are the 
pure in heart, for they shall see God," are solemn with 
warning, to another they are soothing with comfort ; to 
one they mean battle, to another peace ; to one they 
sound like music on the waters, to another like the trump 
of doom. 

Coidd you define the meaning of Mozart's air, so that 
it should be the same to all, how much had been lost ! 
Could you do the same by Christ's words, what a mis- 
fortune ! To limit them to one meaning would be to 
destroy their life. 

Again, take the paradoxical sayings. "If a man smite 
thee on the one cheek, turn to him the other." Submit 
that to the criticism of the understanding, without per- 
mitting spiritual feeling to play upon it, and it becomes 
absurd. Define it accurately, and there is either too 
much or too little left of it. Tell the man who has a 
tendency to fear that he is to take it literally, and he 
becomes a coward on principle ; tell the same to another 
who has military traditions of honor, and he says that 
Christ's teaching is not fit for practical life. But do not 
attempt to define it : let the spirit of each man explain 
it to himself, and the truth which is in it will work its 
way. 

There is no doubt, I think, that Christ would have 
refused to explain it. All he would have said, he did 
say : " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 

It seems as if Christ distinctly chose indefiniteness in 



106 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



certain parts of his teaching, in order to shut out the 
possibility of any rigid system of Christian thought. 

Of course there are positive and definite jjortions of 
his teaching. " Do unto others as ye would they should 
do unto you." "Be ye j)erfect, even as your Father in 
heaven is perfect." " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." 
"Love one another, even as I have loved you." These 
were definite statements, which appealed to the spirit of 
man ; but even in their case Christ never wove them into 
a fixed system of theology, nor hardened them into an 
unchanging mode of practice. 

How was he to systematize aspiration to perfection, 
or define the love of man to man, or exjnain in limited 
words the passionate desire to be redeemed from the 
moral degradation of sin? Was he to reply to men who 
asked him to say what he meant by "our" in "Our 
Father"? 

Ko : the statements were positive, but they had to do 
with things not knowable by the understanding, not de- 
finable by the intellect. Therefore, Christ's religion can 
never be made into a system. It will form the basis and 
the life of system after system : it will never be itself a 
system. And, because of this, it has the poAver of ex- 
panding with the religious growth of the world, and of 
adapting itself to the religious stand-points of various 
nations. 

Men must form systems : it belongs to our nature to do 
so. Fifty years did not pass after the death of Christ 
before Christianity was cast into a mould, and intellect- 
ual propositions formed around it. But even then Saint 
Paul cast it into one mould, and Saint John into one 
quite different. It was flexible to both, and retained 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 107 

in both these men its root ideas and its spiritual influ- 
ence, so that its spirit through Saint John had power 
upon the Oriental and through Saint Paul upon the 
Western world. 

A century afterward, the modes of representing Chris- 
tianity changed, and continued to change from genera- 
tion to generation in that intellectual time, till there 
were as many systems of Christianity as there were na- 
tions in the Church. Its flexibility was proved to be 
almost infinite. And it has continued so up to the pres- 
ent time. It is systematized in three or four forms in 
England at this moment, and they may all have perished 
in a century; but the spirit of Christ's teaching will 
have remained, expanding to suit the new thoughts of 
men and the progress of the whole nation. Therefore, 
it is contained in the idea of Christianity that its out- 
ward form should be not only subject to continual 
change, but should even be different at one and the same 
time in different nations. 

Hence, the fighting and opposition of sect to sect 
which has been objected to Christianity is one of those 
things which flow from its very nature. If its founder 
left it unsystematized, it was sure to be systematized in 
different ways, and these differences would produce con- 
tention. Contention is an evil, but it is a less evil than 
the spiritual stagnation which would have followed upon 
a hard and fast system. 

Moreover, if Christianity was to expand, it was neces- 
sary that its truths should be the subjects of controversy, 
that different and opposing systems might place now 
one of its ideas, now another, in vivid light ; so that, by 
the slow exhaustion of false views, it might come forth 



103 



FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 



clear at last, unrobing itself as a mountain from the 
mists of the dawn. 

Make any religion into a system, define its outlines 
clearly, and before long there will be no movement of 
thought about it, no enthusiasm of feeling, no vital in- 
terest felt in its ideas. It suits the time at which it is 
put forward; but, when that time has passed, it has 
nothing to say to men. But let system be foreign to it, 
— let its original ideas be capable of taking various re- 
ligious forms, — and it will have the power of expanding 
forever, of becoming systematic without ever binding 
itself to system; changing its form not only in every 
time, but in every country, and growing in a direct ratio 
to the growth of the world. 

Therefore, we say the original want of system in 
Christ's teaching ensures its power of expansion, and 
that fits it for the use of the Race now and hereafter. 

But, if this were all, it would prove nothing. There 
must be a quality in a religion destined to be of eternal 
fitness for men which directly appeals to all men, or else 
its want of system will only minister to its ruin. And, if 
that quality exist, it must be one which we cannot con- 
ceive as ever failing to interest men, and therefore as 
expanding with the progress of Man. 

T\ r e find this in the identification of Christianity with 
the life of a perfect Man. 

What is Christianity? Christianity is Christ, — the 
whole of Human Nature made at one with God. Is it 
possible to leave that behind as the race advances? On 
the contrary, the very idea sujyposes that the religion 
which has it at its root has always an ideal to present 
to men, and therefore always an interest for men. As 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 109 



long as men are men, can they ever have a higher moral 
conception of God than that given to them through the 
character of a perfect Man, and can we conceive, in 
centuries to come, men ever getting beyond that idea, 
as long as they are in the human state ? The conception 
of what the ideal Man is will change, as men grow more 
or less perfect, or as mankind is seen more or less as a 
vast organism ; but, as long as there is a trace of imper- 
fection in us, this idea, — that perfect humanity, that is, 
perfect fatherhood, perfect love, perfect justice, — all our 
imperfect goodnesses, — realized in perfection, and im- 
personated in One Being, is God to us, can never fail to 
create religion and kindle worship. It is the last absurd- 
ity, looking at the root ideas of Christianity, to say that 
it is ceasing to be a religion for the race. 

The " religion of Humanity " and the " worship of 
Humanity," considered as a great and living whole, is 
the latest phase into which religion, apart from Christian- 
ity, has been thrown. I am unable to see how it differs, 
so far as it asserts a principle, from the great Christian 
idea. Everything it says about Humanity, and our du- 
ties to Humanity, seems to me to be implicitly contained 
in Christ's teaching, and to be no more than an expan- 
sion of the original Christian idea of a divine Man in 
whom all the race is contained, and who is, ideally, the 
race. But I am far from wishing this new religious idea 
to be set aside as unworthy of consideration, nor do I 
join in the cry which has been raised against it. On 
the contrary, I wish it to be carefully studied, that we 
may get all the good out of it we can, and add many of 
its ideas to our present form of Christianity. Most of its 
positive teaching is Christian in thought and feeling, 



110 



FAITH A1STD FREEDOM. 



though it denies or ignores other Christian ideas which 
seem necessary for a human religion. It would be un- 
true in a Christian teacher to despise or abuse a religion 
which puts self-sacrifice forward as the foundation of 
practical duty, not only among men, but among societies 
and nations. It would be equally untrue, if I did not 
say that the refusal to consider the existence of a per- 
sonal God and the immortality of man will, in the end, 
make that religion die of starvation. 

But, with regard to the special point in question, — the 
worship of a great Being, called Humanity, — there is 
this difference, and it is a radical one, between Christian- 
ity and the religion of Positivism, that the Humanity 
the latter worships is indefinite to the religious emotions, 
while its system is definite to the understanding. It is 
in this the exact reverse of Christianity, which has no 
system capable of being defined by the understanding, 
and possesses a Human Person distinctly defined for the 
emotions. It is plain that, if what I have said be worth 
anything, the definite system in this religion will be an 
element of death in it, and forbid its contemporaneous 
growth with the race. It is no matter of doubt to me 
that the worship of a Humanity — which it needs an 
active intellectual effort to conceive, and a large knowl- 
edge of history to conceive adequately, or which se- 
cludes one sex as a special representative of its ideal 
— can never stir religious emotion nor awake action 
based on love to it, in the mass of mankind, however 
much it may do so in particular |)ersons. The general 
mass of men require that this ideal Man be concentrated 
for them into one person, with whom they can have 
distinct personal relations, whom they can personally 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. Ill 



love for his love, and reverence for his perfection. It 
is not easy, knowing mankind as we do, — seeing its 
meanness, cruelty, and weakness, as well as all its nobil- 
ity, — to represent it to ourselves as an object of wor- 
ship, or to care particularly whether its blessing rests on 
us or not. Than this, it is certainly more easy to con- 
ceive, as an object of worship, God, revealed in will and 
character by a perfect Man; and more simple to think 
of one Man embodying all the Race than of the whole 
Race as one Man. It is a more satisfying thought to 
give our love to human nature as seen in Christ, without 
evil, full of perfect love and sympathy, both male and 
female in thought and feeling, than to Mankind as seen 
in history. It is more delightful to love men as seen in 
him, for the glorious ideal they will attain to, than to 
love them as they are, and without a sure hope of their 
eternal progress ; and that the blessing of Christ's per- 
fect Manhood and Womanhood should rest upon us, that 
his love, pity, strength, support, and j:>eace should belong 
to us and accomj^any us ; that he should attend us as a 
personal friend and interest himself in our lives, till they 
reach the j>erf ection of his life ; and that he should be 
doing the same for all our brothers as for us, — does seem 
more fitted to kindle worship and stir emotion than the 
thought that we are parts of a vast organism which con- 
tinues to live, like the body, by the ceaseless and eternal 
death of its parts. 

It may be possible to feel a pleasure in sacrificing 
one's self for the good of this great Being which lives by 
consuming its own children, and to enjoy the thought of 
immortality in its continued progress without ever per- 
sonally realizing that immortality. But, after all, this 



112 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



overshadowing and abstract " Humanity," which crushes 
us while it moves on, is not attractive, and is more 
likely in the end to create despair and anger than to give 
life to hope and love. 

But the ideal Man in Christ is very different. It de- 
mands the same self-sacrifice, but it does not annihilate 
men. And in itself it is intensely interesting to men, 
because it is so perfectly human. Whether men are 
Christians or not, that exquisite life of Christ will always 
attract them; so true to childhood, youth, and manhood; 
so simple, yet so complex ; so womanly, yet so manly ; 
in love, in honor, and in truth, in noble endurance, in 
resolute will and purity, so ideal, yet so real to that 
which we feel we ought to be, or may be, that there is 
no possible age of the world in the far-off future which 
will not, as long as men are human, love that with the 
love which is worship. 

So the ideal manhood, which is at the root of Chris- 
tianity, ensures to it a power of expanding with the 
growth of the race ; and this power is one proof at least 
of the eternal fitness of Christ's teaching for mankind. 

The third quality in it which ensures its exj:>ansive- 
ness is that it has directly to do with the subjects which 
have always stirred the greatest curiosity, awakened the 
profoundest thought, and produced the highest poetry 
in man. And these are the subjects which are insoluble 
by logical analysis, unknowable by the understanding: 
What is God, and his relation to us ? Whence have we 
come ? Whither are we going ? What is evil, and why 
is it here ? What is truth, and is there any positive 
truth at all ? Do we die or live forever ? 

It is the fashion among some to say, " Do not trouble 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 113 



yourself about the insoluble " ; and there are those who 
succeed, perhaps, in doing so. Well, I think them 
wrong, as they think me wrong. No one feels more 
intensely than I do the pain of not having things clear, — 
the vital torment of a thirst ever renewed, and not as 
yet fully satisfied ; but I had rather keep the pain and 
the thirst than annihilate, as it seems to me, a portion of 
my human nature. I must trouble myself about these 
things, and so must others ; and the trouble has its source 
in an integral part of our human nature. We must tear 
away that part before we can get rid of these subjects 
To deny that this part of our nature exists is absurd; to 
affirm that it has been produced by education in men, 
not having originally been in their nature, is to beg the 
question. What we have to do with is what lies before 
us; and if I were asked what is the most universal char- 
acteristic of man, that which most clearly distinguishes 
him from the lower animals, I should answer that it was 
the passion for solving what is called the insoluble, the 
desire of knowing what is said to be unknowable. 

I meet that longing everywhere. There is no history 
which is not full of it. There is no savage nation which 
has learned the first rudiments of thought, in which 
you do not find it. There is no poetry which does not 
bear the traces of it, — nay, whose noblest passages are 
not inspired by it. There is scarcely a single philosophy 
which does not work at it, or at least acknowledge it by 
endeavoring to lay it aside. One cannot talk for an hour 
to a friend without touching it at some point, nor take 
up a newspaper without seeing its influence; and, if 
Christ had started a religion for mankind with the 
dictum, Lay aside thinking about these questions, his 



114 



FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 



religion would seem to be unfit for men : it would have 
shut out the whole of the most curious part of our being. 
But he did the exact contrary: he recognized these 
questions as the first and the most important. He came, 
he said, for the express purpose of enabling us to solve 
them sufficiently. He said that truth was to be found, 
that God could be known, that immortality was a reality, 
that evil was to be overthrown, that we came from God 
and went to God. 

But to solve these questions and to know God is not 
done at once. It is the work of a lifetime. Christ said 
that there were answers to be found : he did not reveal 
the answers at once. He did not wish to take away 
from men the discipline of personal effort, nor to free 
them from the pain, the victory over which would give 
them spiritual strength, the endurance of which would 
make them men. He put them in the way of solving 
these questions for themselves. By asking and seeking, 
by prayer and humility, they were to solve the apj:>ar- 
ently insoluble. By doing his will, by living his life of 
holiness, self-sacrifice, and devotion to truth, they were 
at last to know the truth. 

Therefore, because these problems which are called 
insoluble were left by Christ as personal questions which 
every man born into the world must solve for himself, 
human effort after God can never suffer the stagnation 
which complete knowledge would produce in imperfect 
man. Religious emotions, the play of feeling and intel- 
lect around spiritual things, desire after higher good, 
prayer, active work toward a more perfect love and 
toward the winning of truth, are all kept up in us by 
the sense of imperfect knowledge, imperfect spiritual 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 115 



being, and, in addition, by the hope which grows 
stronger through the experience of growth, that we 
shall know even as we are known, and become perfect 
even as our God. 

Remove from religion these difficult questions, and 
the hope and the passion of discovering their answers, 
and I believe that all religious emotions will die, and all 
religion of any kind finally perish in contact with the 
world. 

It is because Christianity as taught by Christ acknowl- 
edges these questions as necessarily human ; it is because 
it leaves their solution to personal effort, and so secures 
an undying source of religious effort and emotion ; it is 
because it promises that those who follow the method of 
Christ, and live his life, shall solve them, — that Christian- 
ity belongs to men, is calculated to expand, to suit men 
in every age. If so, there is another reason which may 
be alleged for its eternal fitness for the race. 

'Lastly, if what Christianity says be true, that we shall 
all enter into a life everlasting, these three qualities in 
Christ's religion of which I have spoken are not without 
their meaning or their value to us there. 

That our religion should be without a system will en- 
able us, in a new life and under new conditions, to reor- 
ganize it without difficulty, to fit it into the new circum- 
stances of our being, to use it in novel ways. 

That our religion is a human religion, that it appeals 
directly to human nature, that it is nothing apart from 
mankind, that it is woven up with all the desires and 
hopes and sorrows of men, that it bids us concentrate 
all the race into One Person, and love all men in him, 
that it throws all our effort and enthusiasm on the 



116 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



progress of mankind, — these do not belong to this world 
alone. If we live again, we shall live in a higher way, 
in the race ; for we shall live in Christ, not an isolated 
life, but a life in all mankind. We shall be more united 
with our fellow-men, more ready to give ourselves awa}' 
to them, more interested in the progress of mankind, 
more able to help. Never, as long as Christ is, can we 
forget, or cease our communion with, the whole world of 
men. 

And, finally, that even after attaining much, enough 
at least to set us' in all the peace which is good for us, 
there should remain, as I think there will remain, in the 
eternal life, certain questions which we shall have to 
solve, certain things which man cannot wholly know, it 
will not be an evil, but a good thing for us. For that 
there should always be things above us and unknown 
ensures our eternal aspiration, ensures to us the passion- 
ate delight of ceaseless progress. 



THE FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY 
FOR MANKIND— II. 
1871. 

"Another parable put he forth unto them, salving, The kingdom of 
heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and 
sowed in his field : which indeed is the least of all seeds ; hut when it 
is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that 
the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." — Matt. 
xiii., 31, 32. 

Those who love variety of color and variety of form 
can scarcely reap a deeper pleasure than is his who 
walks slowly through the lower part of one of the Ital- 
ian valleys of the Alps when spring is at its height. 
The meadows are full of flowers, at once so brilliant, 
soft, and manifold of hue, that the grass seems sown with 
dust of rainbows. The gray boulders, which lie like 
castles on the sloping lawns, are stained scarlet and gold 
and bronze with many lichens. Chestnut and walnut 
spread their rich leaves below; above, the oak clusters 
in the hollow places; higher still, the pines climb the 
heights in dark battalions. Color, form, development, 
are all different : each flower, leaf, and tree, each variety 
of grass or lichen, has its own peculiar beauty, its own 
individuality. 

It seems impossible to include them all under one 



118 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



term, to say that they are all substantially one thing. 
Yet they are all transmuted sunshine. Every fibre, 
every cell, every atomic arrangement which enables 
each of them to give us the sensation of red or violet, 
or what color lies between these, has been built up 
through means of the force or the forces of the sunshine. 
Nevertheless, this one original element has been modi- 
fied by the tendency — I use a word which but expresses 
our ignorance — of each seed to assume a specialized 
form at a certain stage in its growth, to be modified by 
what one would call in mankind its character. So that 
we have two things, — one simple source of vegetable life, 
infinite forms and modifications of form through which 
that force is conditioned. 

It is a happy analogy by which to arrive at the idea 
of the one spirit of Christ's life, received and modified 
into a thousand forms by different characters of men 
and different types of nations. Christianity is like the 
sunshine, — not a given form, nor imposing a uniform 
system of growth : it is a force of spiritual heat and 
light, which expands, develops, and irradiates ; a spirit- 
ual chemical force which destroys dead things, and 
quickens half-living things in the character. It is as- 
similated, but according to the original arrangement of 
the spiritual atoms of each character, so that it does not 
destroy, but enhances individuality ; does not injure, 
but intensifies variety. 

There has scarcely ever lived a single Christian man 
whose Christianity has been identical in form with that 
of another, though the species may have been the same. 
There is certainly no Christian nation which has ]3ro- 
duced a type of Christianity uniform with that of 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 119 



another. Look at the Apostolic Church, read the Epis- 
tles which remain to us. The letters of Saint James, of 
Saint Peter, of Saint Paul, of Saint John, differ as the 
oak differs from the chestnut, as the fir differs from the 
ash-tree. These rej)resent in various forms what the 
sunshine has done for them : the Epistles represent, in 
various forms of Christian thought, what the spirit of 
Christ had wrought in their authors. 

I venture to say that there never has existed a set of 
religious books which so manifestly despised outward 
consistency, and so boldly fell back upon an inner unity 
of spirit ; which, though they systematized to a certain 
extent, showed more plainly, taken together, that there 
was no system in the source from whence they drew 
their inspiration ; which dared more audaciously to vary 
their modes of expressing spiritual truths, relying on, 
and because of, their appeal to the primary instincts of 
mankind. 

This was one of the elements which we saw last Sun- 
day lay at the root of the success of Christianity. It 
left individual and national development free, and it ap- 
pealed to a common humanity. And, having no system, 
it promoted liberty of growth in mankind; and when 
that growth had passed a certain stage, and the charac- 
ter of the time changed, it changed its form in turn to 
suit the new ideas of men. But, beneath all these 
varied representations, there will always be a few clear 
principles, and a spirit which will remain the same. 
Whether Christianity exist as Calvinist or Ritualist, 
Roman Catholic or Lutheran, Wesleyan or Unitarian, 
all these forms will have taken their life and built up 
their being from the sunlight of Christ. 



120 



"FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



It will be easily seen from this how much I despise 
the struggle for uniformity, and how much I dread it as 
directly anti-Christian. Unity of spirit we should en- 
deavor to seek for, and keep in the bond of peace ; but 
uniformity! Imagine a world in which all the trees 
were pines. 

The effort to establish uniformity is not only the note 
of an uncultivated spirit, it is especially the mark of one 
who has not studied the teaching of Christ, nor the 
teaching of the Apostles. And Christianity has been 
especially unfortunate in the way in which, for many 
ages, its followers, foolishly dismayed by the cry of 
inconsistency, have made it almost a point to struggle 
against Christ's altogether divine conception of a spirit- 
ual universe of worshippers at one in the midst of a 
boundless variety. Yet such is the vitality of Chris- 
tianity that it has resisted the very efforts of its own 
children to nullify its qualities, and remains as before, 
a spirit of light and a spirit of life, capable of endless 
expansion, ready to alter its form in order to co-operate 
with every human movement, and working out in every 
human soul who receives it some subtile phase of its 
beauty, some delicate shade of its tenderness, some new 
manifestation of its graces. 

We have spoken so far of the religion of Christ in 
contact with human character : let us look at it in con- 
tact with some great human interests. 

Take politics. Other religions have laid down politi- 
cal systems, and bound themselves to ideas of caste, to 
imperialism, or to socialism. The latest religion has 
woven into its body a most cumbrous arrangement of 
mankind and the nations of mankind. Consequently, 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOE, MANKIND. 121 



these religions, being tied to the transient, perished, or 
will perish, with the political systems to which they are 
bonnd. 

Christianity never made this mistake. It refused to 
be mixed up with any political system, or to bind those 
who followed it down to any form of political union, as 
it had refused to bind them down to any particular form 
of religious union. Leaving itself perfectly free, it 
could therefore enter as a spirit of good into any form 
of government. And it did enter into all forms — patri- 
archal, military, feudal, monarchical, imperial, demo- 
cratic — as a spirit which modified the evils of each, and 
developed their good. It is objected to Christianity 
that it does not touch on great political questions, such 
as the limits of obedience to a ruler or the duties of the 
State to the citizens, and therefore that it is not a relig- 
ion for men; but it does not touch directly on these 
questions, because its object was to j:>enetrate them all 
as an insensible influence. Had it declared itself inrpe- 
rialist or democratic, it would have been excluded from 
the one or from the other. But, entering into the 
hearts of men as a spirit of love, of aspiration after per- 
fection, of justice and forgiveness, it crept from man to 
man, till in every nation there existed a body of men 
who had absorbed the spirit of Christ, who slowly 
brought about political regeneration through spiritual 
regeneration. 

But because it has prevailed in countries where feudal 
systems and the tyrannies of caste have ruled, it has been 
accused of having been on the side of oppressors of the 
race. The objection is plausible, but it is unfair. Some 
distinction is surely to be made between a church made 



122 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



into a j^olitical organ and Christianity itself. When the 
Church, as in France before the Revolution, became a 
mere adjunct to the throne, and threw in its lot with 
tyrants, it forswore its Christianity. When it estab- 
lished itself at Rome as a tyranny over men's souls, it 
turned upon its Founder and recrucified him. More- 
over, if Christianity has been accused as the handmaid 
of oppression, it is at least just to look on the other side, 
and see if it has not been the inspirer of the noblest 
revolutions. All its fundamental ideas — the Father- 
hood of God, the brotherhood of all men in Christ, the 
equality of all men before God, the individual responsi- 
bility of every human soul, the surrender of all things 
for others, the one necessity of salvation for all alike, 
emperor and peasant — are spiritual ideas which bear an 
easy translation into j^olitical ideas, and which, gather- 
ing strength, have proved the ruin of many tyrannies. 
If Christianity has any close relation with a distinct 
political idea, it is with the idea of a high democracy ; 
and if, as some say, the world is irresistibly tending to 
democracy, there is nothing in Christianity to prevent its 
falling in with this political tendency. I see no limit to 
its expansion, should that take place. On the contrary, 
I think that it will take in democracy a farther and a 
more brilliant, a freer and more devotional development 
than ever it has yet done. The atmosphere will be more 
congenial to it. 

Again, take art. Greek religion lent itself to sculpt- 
ure, but after a time its ideas were exhausted. It 
afforded no universal range of subjects. Some way or 
another, human as it was, it was not human enough to 
enable it to last. It was of Greece : it was not of man- 
kind. 



FITNESS OF CHEISTIANITY FOE MANKIND, 123 

The religion of Mohammed shut out all jointing and 
sculpture of living forms from its sacred architecture. 
But the Romanesque and Gothic builders, with a strange 
instinct that in Christianity there was nothing irrelig- 
ious, and that every act of human life, if done naturally, 
or for just ends, even if it were such an act as war, was a 
religious act, and that all the world, animate and inani- 
mate, was holy to the Lord in Christ, filled porch and 
arcade and string-course with sculpture of all things in 
earth and heaven, — symbolized the revolving year, made 
parables of beauty and of terror, and threw into breath- 
ing stone the hopes, the passions, the fears, and the faith 
of Christian men. 

This was but one field of the immense space which 
Christianity opened to religious art. No limitations 
were placed upon it by the religion. It was left to each 
nation, according to its genius, to develop it in its own 
way. 

It was the same with j>oetry as with architecture. It 
lost nothing by the addition of the Christian element : 
it gained, on the contrary, a great subject. And that 
subject, in its infinite humanity, in the way it has of 
making those who grasp it largely interested in all 
things, in the majesty which belongs to it, does not pre- 
vent men from rising into the grand style, — that style 
which makes a man feel himself divine as he reads. On 
the contrary, of the three poets who, since Christ, have 
possessed this style in perfection, two employed all their 
power on subjects which belonged to Christian thought. 
The majesty of the subject reacted on their power of 
expression. They proved at least that Christianity does 
not exclude, but is expansive enough to include, the 



124 



FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 



art of jDoetry. Moreover, a religion -which appeals to 
human feeling, which is nothing apart from Man, whose 
strongest impulse is the " enthusiasm of humanity," can 
never be apart from an art like that of poetry, which 
withers, corrupts, and dies when it is severed from the 
interests of men. One may even go further. Chris- 
tianity has to do with the insoluble, with visions which 
love alone can realize, with questions to which the under- 
standing gives no reply, with feelings which cannot be 
defined, only aj^proaehed, in words. It is the very 
realm in which half of the poetry of the world has been 
written. 

There is nothing, then, to prevent Christianity exist- 
ing in harmonious relation with all true poetry from age 
to age of the world. In itself, it gives a grand subject to 
poetry, and both it and poetry have similar elements : 
their common appeal to, and their death apart from, 
human interests and feelings ; their common life in a 
region above the understanding. 

I need not dwell on the arts of music and painting. 
Let us pass on to science. Supposing Christianity had 
committed itself to any scientific statements or to any 
scientific method : it could never have been fitted to 
expand with the expansion of knowledge, to be a relig- 
ion for a race which is continually advancing in scientific 
knowledge. If it had bound itself up with the knowl- 
edge of its time, it would naturally be subject now to 
repeated and ruinous blows. If it had anticipated the 
final discoveries of science, and revealed them, nobody 
would have believed it then, and nobody would proba- 
bly believe it now. Christianity committed itself to 
nothing. " Yours is not my province," it said to science. 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 125 



" Do your best in your own sphere, with a single eye to 
truth. I will do my best in mine. Let us not throw 
barriers in each other's way. The less we obstruct each 
other, the more chance there is of our finding in the end 
union in the main ideas which regulate both our worlds 
in the mind of God." 

Foolish men have mixed it up with science, and en- 
deavored to bind each down upon the bed of the other, 
to make science Christian, and Christianity scientific; 
but the result has always been a just rebellion on both 
sides. The worst evil has been the unhallowed and 
forced alliance of the doctrine of the plenary inspiration 
of the Bible, or of the infallibility of the Church, to 
Christianity. The moment science was truly born, war 
to the death arose against a form of Christianity which 
violated the original neutrality of Christianity toward 
the pure intellect and its pursuit of its own truths. But 
get rid of this alliance, and how is Christianity in oppo- 
sition to science ? What is to prevent its being a relig- 
ion fit for man in that future when the youngest child 
will know more than the philosopher of to-day ? It is 
no more in actual opposition to science than poetry is. 

The river glideth at his own sweet will. 

I suj)pose no scientific man would run atilt at that. Its 
thought, its feeling, the impression it is intended to 
convey, are all out of the sphere of science. Neverthe- 
less, the natural philosopher recognizes that it appeals to 
his imagination. He receives pleasure from it : he accepts 
it as true in its own sphere. 

But, if he were told that the writer claimed infallibility 
for his expression, said that it expressed not only a cer- 



126 



FATTH AND EBEEDOM. 



tain touch of human feeling about the river, but also the 
very j)hysical truth about the movement of the river, he 
would naturally be indignant. " Tou have left your own 
ground," he would say to the poet, " where you were 
supreme, and you have come into mine, where, by the 
very hypothesis of your art, you are a stranger. You 
claim my obedience, here, in my own kingdom, the abso- 
lute surrender of my reason in a realm where reason is 
the rightful lord. You may be a poet, but you are deny- 
ing the first principles of your art. 

Precisely the same might be said to those who are 
ill-informed enough to connect the spirit and life of 
Christianity with efforts to suppress physical science or 
historical criticism as tending to infidelity, or as weaken- 
ing Christian truth. It might be said to them by a wise 
scholar: "You may be Christians, but you are doing all 
the harm you can to Christianity. You are endeavoring 
to bind an elastic and expanding spirit into a rigid 
mould, in which it will be suffocated. You are fettering 
your living truth to physical and historical theories 
which have been proved to be false and dead, and your 
Christianity will surfer as the living man suffered when 
the cruel king bound him to the corpse. Your special 
form of Christianity will grow corrupt, and die, for it 
attacks truth." But if some Christian people have gone 
out of their sphere, there are not wanting philosophers 
to do the same. " I know nothing of God and immor- 
tality," says science, and with an air as if that settled the 
question. "I should think you did not," Christianity 
would gravely answer : " No one ever imagined that you 
could, but I do. I do know a great deal about those 
wonderful realities ; and I have given my knowledge of 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOE, MANKIND. 127 



them to millions of the human race, who have received 
it, proved it through toil and pain, and found it powerful 
to give life in the hour of death." "Proved it," answers 
science, " not in my way, the only way worth haAung, 
the way which makes a thing clear to the understanding." 
But there are hundreds of things which are not and can- 
not be submitted to such a proof. We cannot subject 
the action of any of the passions to the explanations of 
the understanding.' By reasoning alone, we cannot say 
what an envious, jealous, self-sacrificing, or joyful man 
may do next, nor explain his previous actions. One 
might far more easily predict the actions of a madman. 

We cannot give any reason for love at first sight, or, 
what is less rare, but as real, friendship at first sight. 
We cannot divide into compartments the heart and soul 
of any one person in the world, saying, This is the 
boundary of that feeling. So far, this quality will carry 
the man in life. For the understanding is but a second- 
ary power in man. It can multiply distinctions. It 
cannot see the springs of life where the things are born 
about which it makes distinctions. 

" Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." 

What tells us that is poetry ? The voice of the under- 
standing? "Wight's candles are burnt out," it says: 
"it is a ridiculous statement of the fact that the stars 
have ceased to shine. Day never stands tiptoe on the 
misty mountain-tops. Is that poetry ? It is nonsense." 
But the understanding rarely acts alone in this way : a 
higher power in man proves to him, he cannot tell how, 
that the lines are magnificent poetry, — nay, that the 



128 



FAITH AND FREEDOM!. 



poetry is in the very j^assages which the understanding 
despises. 

Let each keej3 to their own spheres, and do their work 
therein. Christianity has no weapons in her original 
armory which can be wielded against science, and science 
cannot attack spiritual truths with purely intellectual 
weapons. Xo one asks for a spiritual proof that the 
earth goes round the sun : it is equally absurd to ask for 
a purely intellectual j^roof of the existence of an all- 
loving Father. And it would be wiser if science kept 
her hands off Christianity. Mankind will bear a great 
deal, but it will not long bear the denial of a God of 
love, the attempt to thieve away the hope of being 
perfect and our divine faith in immortality. These 
things are more precious than all physical discoveries. 
The efforts made to rob us of them, when they are 
made, and they are but rarely made, are not to be pa- 
tiently endured. They are far less tolerable than the ill- 
advised attempts of Christian men to dominate over 
science. These latter efforts are absurd, but the former 
are desrradiuor to human nature. 

It really does not make much matter to the race in 
general whether the whole science of geology were 
proved to-morrow to have been proceeding on a wrong 
basis, or whether the present theory of force be true or 
not ; but it would make the most serious matter to man- 
kind, if they knew for certain to-morrow that there was 
no God of justice and love, or that immortality was a 
fond invention. The amount of suppressed and latent 
belief in these truths, which we should then discover in 
men, who now deny them, would be perhaps the 
strangest thing we should observe ; but it hath not en- 



FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOE MANKIND. 129 



tered into the heart of man to imagine the awfuiness 
of the revolution which, following on this denial, would 
penetrate into every corner of human nature and human 
life. 

Both science and Christianity have vital and precious 
truths of their own to give to men, and they can develoj) 
together without interfering with each other. Should 
science increase its present knowledge tenfold, there is 
nothing it can discover which will enable it to close up 
that region in man where the spirit communes in prayer 
and praise with its Father, where the longing for rest is 
content in the j^eace of forgiveness, where the desire of 
being perfect in unselfishness is satisfied by union with 
the activity of the unselfish God, where sorrow feels its 
burden lightened by divine sympathy, where strength is 
given to overcome evil, where, as decay and death 
grow upon the outward frame, the inner spirit begins to 
put forth its wings and to realize more nearly the eternal 
summer of his presence, in whom there is fulness of life 
in fulness of love. Xo : as Christianity can expand to 
fit into the progress of politics, and to adapt itself to the 
demands of art, so it can also throw away, without losing 
one feature of its original form, rather by returning to 
its purer type, all the elements opposed to the advance 
of science which men have added to its first simplicity. 

It will be pleasant, if what I have said be true, for all 
of us to meet five hundred years hence, and, interchang- 
ing our tidings of the earth, to find that the thoughts 
and hopes of this sermon, in which many of you must 
sympathize, have not been proved untrue. 



THE CHANGED ASPECT OF CHKIS- 
TIAN THEOLOGY.* 

1873. 

" I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now." — St. John xvi., 12. 

The foundation of Christian Theology is the revela- 
tion given by Jesus Christ with regard to God in his 
relation to man. It was the flower of the previous reve- 
lations, the concentration and completion of the the- 
ology of the past. 

But did it do as much for the theology of the future, 
did it once for all give to man all the knowledge of God 
which he is to have hereafter? Our accredited teaching 
answers that question in the negative. We look for- 
ward to a time when Christ shall come a second time 
and close this dispensation, aud we, freed from the bar- 
riers which darkly close us in, shall possess an immedi- 
ate knowledge of God, see him as he is, know him even 
as we are known by kim. The revelation of Christ, 
then, did not complete revelation. 

But, again, the question arises, Is this future revelation 
to which we look to be a sudden, unprepared revealing 
of higher truths about God, or will it be the natural 
result of a slow development of truth ? Will it be like 

*A sermon preached before the University of Oxford. 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 131 

those sudden creations of new animal life and a new 
world which once were held to be true in geological 
science, or will it follow the, analogy of the slow evolu- 
tion which we know has ruled the progress of life and 
the changes of the face of the earth ? 

I believe in the latter view. It will be as much the 
easy and natural result of a continuous revelation which 
is now going on as the Revelation of Christ, eighteen 
hundred years ago, was the result of a revelation which 
had been going on for thousands of years before he 
came. It will not be a new building suddenly upraised 
from its foundations : it will be the last stone laid ivpon 
a building which God had been laying stone by stone 
from year to year. In idea, then, the progress of revela- 
tion is analogous to that which science teaches us about 
the progress of life, to that which we know of the prog- 
ress of the race in history, of the progress of Art, of 
the progress of Knowledge. Everywhere there is conti- 
nuity, evolution without a break ; and in revelation it is 
the same. 

Now, what position does the revelation given by 
Christ hold toward this continuous revelation ? It gave, 
in complete statement, all that was needed at the time 
it was given, and that which was then given in this way 
will always be needed by man. But there was much in 
it which was not completely stated, much more than 
appeared to the men of that generation. It held in it 
not only clear thoughts, but germs of thought which 
were afterward to be developed ; and in their slow and 
successive development consists the continuity of revela- 
tion. 

At first, they remained asleep ; but, as the elements 



132 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



fitted to make them grow were added to the soil of the 
world, they grew up, one after another, trees of knowl- 
edge and of life, of whose fruits men took, and, eating, 
knew more of God, of their own being, and of their 
duties to their fellow-men. Many of these seeds are 
still asleep, and the future extension of revelation con- 
sists in their coming to the light as the conditions under 
which they can spring up are fulfilled in the progress of 
mankind. "I have yet many things to say to you," said 
Christ, "but ye cannot bear them now." And, again, 
" When he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide 
you into all truth. . . . He shall take of mine, and shall 
show it unto you." The principle is laid down in that 
text ; for we ought not to give it a particular, but a 
universal interpretation. It was not said to the Apos- 
tles alone, but to all mankind in the persons of the 
Apostles. 

It seems reasonable, then, to say that revelation is 
not completed, but being completed; that we look for 
higher knowledge of God, for larger moral views of his 
relation to us and of ours to him, as time goes on and 
mankind grows. Theology is not, then, a fixed science. 
God has not said his last word to us, nor Christ given 
his last counsel of perfection; nor has the Spirit yet 
shown to us the whole of truth. There is, then, a reve- 
lation in the past, the full meaning of which is being 
evolved in the progress of history. 

We have reached a certain point in that development, 
and a clearly marked one, — the point at which theology 
is at last tending to become as unlimited in its statements 
about God and man as the statements of Christ were. 
To speak of that and of the duties it imposes on us will 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 133 



fill up the second -part of this sermon ; but, first, I must 
discuss how it is that we have been so long in arriving at 
that point, and how we have arrived at it. 

First, then, when Christ came on earth, he stated 
ideas which were universal in the sphere of religion, 
and which led directly to ideas universal in the sphere 
of politics. There was one universal Father, and all 
men of every nation were his children. There was 
therefore only one nation, the nation of mankind ; and 
all were, because children of one Father, brothers to 
each other. And, because all were children and need- 
ing redemption, there was a universal education and a 
universal salvation. Beyond all the differences, then, of 
mankind, there was one spiritual country of which all 
were equally citizens, with equal duties and equal rights; 
and every citizen of that country had an unrestricted 
right to personal develoj)ment and communion with God 
his Father. These are what I call universal ideas ; and 
they bore an easy translation into the social and political 
life of classes and nations, and it was their fate to be so 
translated. But not at once : that was impossible. It 
is true they were so translated by the early Christians, 
on whom the ideas of the world 'around them had little 
power, in whose hearts still glowed the personal influence 
of the Saviour ; but, the moment they passed from the 
narrow circle of the believers into contact with the 
Roman world, they not only ceased to be transferred to 
the social life of men, but they lost also their universal 
character. For, being universal, they could not be un- 
derstood or received by a world to which all universal 
ideas were unknown except the idea of universal empire, 
and that one universal idea was in direct antagonism to 



134 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



their spirit. The elements of the world then entered 
into Christianity and changed its form, and the main 
element of that world was Imperialism. It stole into 
the doctrines of the Church, and the idea of God in his 
relation to us was formed in accordance with the impe- 
rial idea with which Rome had impressed the world, 
and with the exclusive and particular ideas of that time. 
It stole into the polity of the Church, and it became 
imperial in spirit and in form ; and the democratic ele- 
ment, as it has been called, in the ideas of Christ, was 
laid asleep for a time. 

TTe may regret this, but we must not forget that it 
was necessary. If the Christian ideas were to enter 
men's hearts at all, they were obliged to take forms 
suited to the times. But in taking, both in doctrine 
and in polity, such forms, they were stripped of their 
universality. And they could not help this. To declare 
a universal doctrine of Fatherhood, Salvation and Broth- 
erhood to a world steeped in the political and social the- 
ories of the Empire, would have been to suppress Chris- 
tianity for a time. It had to be imperialistic, or it would 
not have been received. 

That is one point, and another follows from it : that 
this form which the thoughts of Christ took in the 
Church was not the creation of the Church, half as 
much as it was the creation of the world which sur- 
rounded the Church. It was imposed on Christianity 
from without: the existing popular views necessarily 
made the garments of Christianity. 

That was the fate of the outward revelation of Christ. 
Meantime, the ideas of Christ, though received under 
worldly forms, entered into men's hearts and did their 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 135 



work there ; and the inner revelation which is wrought 
out by the Spirit of God in men began to grow. The 
ideas of Christ were wide as the world, the form they 
took was narrow, but their universal spirit penetrated 
into the heart and set up a subtile and hidden resistance 
to their exclusive form. The Spirit took the things of 
Christ and showed them to men. 

The same things are true with regard to intolerance 
and persecution. It became natural for the Church to 
insist on the opinions it held being received by all. 
Natural, because it was the fashion of the day in other 
realms than those of religion. Rome did not tolerate 
the expression of free opinion against its government. 
It searched it out, and ruthlessly put it down. No one 
thought that it did wrong in doing so. It was deter- 
mined to force all nations into the Roman mould, to 
compel them to adopt and live by the Roman ideas. 
And this view of things naturally entered into Chris- 
tianity, when it grew into form in a Church; and it 
would have been impossible for the Church to have 
been so far beyond its time as not to be as intolerant of 
difference of religious ojnnion as the State was of dif- 
ference of political opinion, as not to have tried to force 
all men to believe the same things in the same way. It 
had to be intolerant and persecuting. 

It has been held up to hatred because of this. But 
again I say, this was not the creation of the Church 
alone, but of the people also. The Church was intol- 
erant and persecuting. What else could she be? It 
was the spirit of the whole time for centuries. If she 
alone had escaped that evil, it would have been miracu- 
lous. And tolerance would not have been understood, 



136 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



and would have met then with universal blame.* Not 
to force truth on men by every means in one's power, 
not to put away those who opposed it, would have 
argued that one did not care for truth, that in itself it 
was worthless. It is perhaps too great a paradox, and 
yet there is much truth in it, to say that it was neces- 
sary, m order that the spirit of Christ's tolerance should 
insensibly creep into men's hearts, that his ideas should 
for a time be clothed in the garment of intolerance. 
That was again the fate of the outer Revelation, but at 
the same time the ideas of Christ, even through this 
alien form, stole into the hearts of men, and wrought 
out, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a practical 
charity, even an international kindness unknown before. 
The seeds of tolerance, of free thought, and the love of 
it, were sown in the world. An inner revelation grew 
up in opposition to the form which the Church, in- 
fluenced by worldly elements, had given to the revela- 
tion of Christ. 

It would be too long now to show how the same kind 
of thing took place when that which has been called the 
Feudal System took form, and the aristocratic element 
which grew out of feudalism divided men sharply into 
classes, isolated them from each other, and crept into 
the conceptions of God and Heaven and Earth which 
both Protestant and Catholic set forward; and how, 
with this, intolerance and persecution grew stronger. 

But again, as before, these elements of doctrine and 
practice were more the creation of the world than the 
Church. Again, as before, the ideas of Christ, though 
their form was worldly and evil, made way, and far 



* See the history of Theodoric. 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 137 



more than before. Even in the Church itself, the relig- 
ious orders s]3read far and wide more democratic views 
of man; and, both within and without the Church, a 
rapidly accumulating series of new impulses, collected 
by us now under the name of the Renaissance, tended 
toward freedom of thought, a larger charity and tol- 
erance, and in religion produced men like Erasmus, 
whose teaching, almost as large as advanced modern 
thought, was also far larger than his time could receive. 

On the whole, then, two things appear to be true. 
First, that the Revelation of Christ was taught by the 
Church through forms, both of doctrine and practice, 
which were created by the spirit of the world, and that 
it could not have been received at all, except it had been 
taught through these forms : that therefore the impe- 
rial and aristocratic elements in the Church were not 
created by the religious body acting alone, but by the 
whole spirit of the age. The priests were not, as their 
opponents say, the tyrants who invented these things : 
they were the mouthpieces of general opinion. It is 
said, As the priest, so the people : it is far truer to say, 
As the people, so the priest. 

And it follows that these elements and the forms 
under which Christianity was represented were not 
then seen as evil by the people nor by the Church, but 
were considered good things. 

Secondly, that, in spite of the forms in which the 
universal ideas of Christ were cast being evil, though 
not known as evil then, they entered into men's hearts, 
and in their sIoav growth is to be sought the real work 
of the Spirit of God in the development of Christianity. 
How shall I make it more clear? The direct influence 



138 



FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 



of Christianity had to be exercised through evil forms ; 
but, since they were not looked u|)on as evil by the world 
of the time, its inner influence was not corrupted by 
them. But that inner, indirect influence in men's hearts 
worked against those forms, and slowly undermined 
them; and in the subtile, hidden growth of its ideas, and 
the living spiritual force they created, tending ever to a 
wider view of God's love to man, a larger view of the 
equal communion of man with man, — to the destruc- 
tion of intolerance in religion and of oppressive systems 
in society, to the freedom of man's soul, and the free- 
dom of all from every form of tyranny, — consists the 
revelation of God through Man in history, the true work 
of the Spirit of Christ, taking his things and showing 
them unto us. "We look, then, to the ideas which the 
Spirit of God has evolved in history out of the seeds 
which Christ sowed for the truest form of his revelation, 
not to the forms into which the Church threw only a por- 
tion of the thoughts of Christ. 

And, now, the resistance which this inner spirit of 
Christ's ideas had set up against the restrictive forms 
imposed on them from without gradually took more 
force to itself, passed from the inward to the outward, 
formulated itself in thought, set on fire no longer indi- 
viduals, but masses of men, and became a revolutionary 
power in the world. Mixed as it was with much evil, it 
was indeed an angel which troubled the Bethesda pool 
of Europe ; and it brought healing with it to the life of 
men. For it was the coming to the light of the true 
conceptions of Christ. 

Sometimes, they took greater strength from the side 
of religion. A prophet came, or a priest turned into a 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 139 

prophet and proclaimed them. Sometimes, on the other 
hand, they were pushed forward from the side of irrelig- 
ion. Those in whom the ideas of Christ were working 
were often and naturally thrown into opposition to the 
Church when the Church joined itself to the oppressors 
of the people, or sought to exercise its own spiritual 
tyranny. Then these men became infidels ; and we have 
the curious spectacle of those who denied Christ teach- 
ing the thoughts of Christ, blindly working the will of 
Heaven. But, from whatever source these ideas came, 
they grew and gathered strength as the years rolled on, 
till at last — in the proclamation that all men had equal 
duties which made equal rights, that there was but one 
nation, the nation of Mankind, one class, the class of 
Man, that all were brothers and citizens of one country, 
that all were free and bound to sacrifice their own good 
for the good of all, that caste and the whole range of 
systems bound up with it was a sin against the whole 
race — the universal ideas which Christ had given in 
religion took form in the social and political worlds, and 
the doom of imperial, aristocratic, exclusive theories in 
politics, society, and religion was sealed. Belshazzar in 
Church or in State alike looked up and saw the fiery let- 
ters grow on the walls of the world, which told him his 
time had come. At last, the inner revelation had come 
to the surface, and proclaimed itself as the Gospel of Man 
in the realms of social and political life. Then for the 
first time it became possible for the world to understand 
or receive -a wide theology. For, in that long struggle, 
the ideas of the world, which were opposed to the univer- 
sal spirit in those of Christ, were sifted, tried, exhausted, 
— that which was good in them wrought into, that which 
was bad in them wrought out of, the body of society. 



140 



FAITH AND FBEEDOM. 



Look round now upon the world. The spirit of the 
whole age is exactly contradictory of that which at its 
first contact with the world stripped Christianity of its 
universality ; the leading ideas of the time have become, 
both here and in Europe, universal on the subject of 
Man; philosophers, historians, poets, and the mass of 
the people, have preached, and are full of these ideas: 
it has therefore become possible, for the first time in the 
history of the world, to have a theology which shall be 
universal in spirit, tolerant in practice, and adequate in 
its conception of God. 

The doctrines of the universal Fatherhood of God, of 
the whole world as the Church of God in idea, and to 
become so in fact; of the education of every soul of 
man to perfection at last, since all are necessarily in God, 
and can never be finally divided from him ; of universal 
Salvation, of universal Immortality ; of the whole Race 
being held, sanctified, and redeemed in Christ ; of the 
final glory, when all who have ever lived shall know 
their equal Brotherhood and do its duties, which universal 
love will make delight, — these have now for the first 
time become possible in theology, and all the doctrines 
which opjiose or deny them are tottering to their fall. 
The force of that popular opinion which is the result of 
the work of God's Spirit in man is against them, and 
their days are numbered. We see already that j>olitical 
and social ideas, which are universal as regards man, are 
working their way into the theology of Europe, and 
re-creating its forms. For as the people and the spirit 
of the past had made the Church limited in thought 
and persecuting in practice, so now they will make it 
tolerant in practice and universal in thought. The- 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN" THEOLOGY. 141 

ological ideas will slowly but surely harmonize them- 
selves with the universal ideas in the social and political 
kingdoms, and we shall have a religion fitted for the 
farther growth of Man. 

In fact, for the first time in history, and after a sus- 
tained battle, we have nearly worked up to the level at 
which Christ spoke. We stand upon his platform; we 
know what he meant when he said, "I have yet many 
things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now." 
There is a clear ]3ath of progress before us ; and it will 
not be long before we may run along it with joy, looking 
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. 

This, then, is the point at which the world has 
arrived. This is our remarkable and unprecedented 
position in the history of religious progress. 

But, though that is the position, there are few who 
recognize it, and scarcely any who occupy it with a 
knowledge of what is wanted. 

That which is needed is a theology which will repre- 
sent in its own realm and with equal breadth of view 
the ideas which have arisen with regard to Man, both in 
his social and political relations. It is wanted, because 
men, who have consciously adopted these ideas, or who 
unconsciously live by them and in their atmosphere, are 
desiring a religion and a theology which will not only 
enable them to link their views about mankind to God, 
but also supply them with a higher enthusiasm in the 
practical working of those views than irreligious j>hilos- 
ophies of Man can give. For the first thing one feels in 
looking round on society is that there is no want of the 
desire to be religious, but that the desire despairs of 
finding a form in which it can clothe itself, and re- 



142 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



mains, therefore, a vague aspiration, without ability to 
act or even sense to know itself. 

Such men look naturally to the Church or to the vari- 
ous religious bodies of the country for some theology 
which they can harmonize with the universal ideas about 
Man, of which I have spoken ; and the search is in vain. 
On the contrary, they find in the Church the old political 
and social ideas still retained, and in both the Church 
and Dissent religious ideas such as the salvation of only 
a few, which, wholly out of harmony with their view of 
Man, are yet imposed on them as necessary to believe, if 
they would be religious. The result is an immediate 
recoil from theology and even religion, violent in some, 
sorrowful in others, but resolute in both. Left utterly 
unhelped, feeling this irreconcilable antagonism, they 
become angry infidels or quiet sceptics. And this infi- 
delity and scepticism is becoming more wide-spread day 
by day. It is unfortunate, but it cannot be helped; and 
it will continue, and must continue to spread, until the 
harmony I speak of is established, till the ideas of theol- 
ogy on God and Man are as universal in their sphere as 
those of the movement called the Revolution are on the 
subject of Man. 

A few are trying to do this, but no class of thinkers, 
as a class, are doing it ; and the result is that there is a 
dead-lock to-day between religion and life. There is no 
attempt to construct an adequate theology for the new 
world. We hear nothing but negations of what others 
hold, and one is very wearied of negations. "Every 
work of opposition is a negative work, anjd a negation 
is a nonenity. If I have called the bad bad, have I 
gained much ? But, if by chance I called the good bad, 



CHANGED ASPECT OE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 143 

I have done a great evil. He who wishes to be of use 
to the world ought not to insult anything. That which 
is bad will die of itself ; and our work is to build, and 
not to overthrow." But, in order to build, we want a 
plan ; and we cannot make a -plan till we know the wants 
of the world for which we build. 

The Church makes various efforts, but none of them 
touch the time. Some are re-creating the Past and try- 
ing to fit it to the Present. It is pouring new wine into 
old bottles, and we can predict the result. 

Some are trying to prove that Christianity is nothing 
but a high morality, and asking the unbelievers to find 
all they desire in that view. But men may have as high 
a morality as is necessary for life here, and be Atheists ; 
and, unless the Church has something higher than moral- 
ity to offer, it will give no help to the world. And, 
unless it has more than a high morality to offer, it has 
ceased to be Christian. For, as in all Art, so in Chris- 
tianity, its direct end is not to make men moral, but to 
awaken in them those deep emotions, and to present to 
them those high ideals, which, felt and followed after, 
will not only indirectly produce morality, but aspiration 
and effort to do far more than men are absolutely bound 
to do by the moral law. 

Some are saying that the religion for man is contained 
in the spirit of Christ's life, — in being gentle, kind, lov- 
ing, true, and forgiving. I am sure that teaching of 
that kind alone will not put an end to scepticism. Men 
want a theology as well as a daily religion of " sweet 
reasonableness," want the intellect satisfied as well as 
the heart. They wish for ideas under which they can 
collect their thoughts with regard to the questions in- 



144 



FAITH AXD FBEEDOM. 



volved in the relation between God and man, such as 
the Being of God, what Nature and Man and Evil are in 
relation to him, forgiveness of sins, immortality, the 
future fate of the race. It will not be enough to say to 
men asking for light on these subjects : "I can say noth- 
ing clearly. I do not know, but I can tell you to live 
the life of Christ." Why, the very thing which wearies 
them into scepticism is that they have no clear vision ; 
and it does not help them to hear confessions of igno- 
rance repeated. If we wish to lead, we must be able to 
assert something clearly ; and that which we assert must 
be in harmony with those new thoughts about mankind 
which openly took form at the end of the last century. 

Then we ask what Unbelief is doing. Is it helping 
the world ? It has on one side deified negations; and to 
accustom the intellect and imagination to denial is to 
rob it finally of the power of construction. Nothing so 
retards the advance of the world as to put negations in 
the place of assertions, and to idolize them as if they 
were ideas. No idolatry is worse than that, no super- 
stition is more degrading ; and it is the general error of 
the infidel party. On the other side, those of them who 
have made a religion have taken out of it God and 
Immortality; and, though a few can bear the loss of 
these ideas, it leaves the mass of men without a centre 
for thought, without any support for noble emotions, 
without any courage or hope or faith in the future of 
Man. Again, as to the scientific unbelief, its present 
tendency is more and more toward Materialism ; and, if 
that were once largely received by the unintelligent 
masses, it would rapidly tend to destroy ideas of any 
kind and their influence. And even those thoughts of a 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN" THEOLOGY. 145 



common mankind, of one humanity, of eqnal duties owed 
to all, of the equal rights of all to self-development, 
which have done so much to civilize, soften, and ennoble 
Man, would after a time cease to have power, and finally 
cease to exist, were materialism to win the day. On the 
side of Unbelief, little is doing to set forward the world, 
much to retard it. For Philosophy and Art, Morality 
and Philanthropy, unless Religion and its enthusiasm 
exist alongside of them, dry up into mere systems, or 
take corrupt and even unnatural forms, which the world 
is obliged to get rid of in the end. 

In every case, then, but little is doing to give a relig- 
ion to the really powerful ideas, to those wider concep- 
tions of Man which, first taken up in England by the 
poets, have now filled nearly every sj)here of thought 
with their influence ; and that nothing is doing is a great 
pity for the sake of the ideas themselves, for they only 
possess half their normal jDower without a religion in 
harmony with them ; nor have we any notion how they 
would push their way, if they had a theology behind 
them which should represent them. Till that is done, 
we shall have our scepticism. 

But those within the Church who see the position at 
which the world has arrived have a clear duty and a 
noble work to do. They have, first, to take away from 
theology, and especially from its idea of God and his 
relation to Man, all exclusive and limited conceptions, 
all also that are tainted by the influence of those ideas 
which crept into it from the spirit of the imperial, aristo- 
cratic, and intolerant ages. They have to harmonize 
theology by the progress of the world, by asserting in it 
ideas as universal with regard to Man and God as those 



146 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



which the Spirit of God has taught the world with re- 
gard to man and his fellow-man. They have, in fact, to 
bring the outer teaching of Christ's revelation up to the 
level of that inner one which has now become outward 
in society and politics, to confess and accept this as the 
work of God; and, having done that, to look back to 
Christ's words and life, and say, "At last, we are free 
from perversions of his Thoughts ; at last, we breathe 
his atmosphere ; at last, we know what he meant ; and, 
since this is what he meant in society, we will make our 
theology mean the same." 

And, secondly, that, in accordance with this, their 
teaching in the Church should heartily, but temperately, 
go with the ideas which are collected round the words 
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity ; not serving the wild 
image which France made of them, but the image which 
an honest and a just idealism presents to our hope. Not 
that the Church should proclaim these social ideas as 
part of its teaching, for that is not its work, but that it 
should never hesitate to symj:>athize with them through, 
and by means of, its religious teaching ; that it should 
cease to support with its voice all institutions and gov- 
ernments which oppress or hamper the free growth of 
the people ; that it should set itself loose from the ideas 
of caste ; that it at least should say, " I have nothing to 
do with up2i>er, middle, or lower classes, but all men 
before me stand on the same ground, as sons of God and 
brothers of each other"; that it should pay no longer 
any special honor to wealth or rank for their own sake, 
but only see in any man his character as a member of 
Christ, and speak as much home to the vices and follies 
of rich and titled persons as to those of the poor, and 



CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 147 

more sternly, inasmuch as it is more difficult to make 
them feel, owing to traditionary pride ; that it should 
take its stand on ideas, not on custom; on principles, 
not on maxims ; on love, not on law ; that it should live, 
looking not to the Past and Present only, but chiefly to 
the Future of Mankind, and organize its action for the 
sake of the future ; that it should not be too anxious to 
serve order, lest its power and wealth should be dis- 
turbed, whensoever, at least, it sees that the existing 
order of things is not a living order because it repre- 
sents the best thoughts of the time, but only a negation 
of disorder; that it should not be afraid of what are 
called revolutionary thoughts, remembering that all rev- 
elations have given birth to revolutions, and that if Re- 
ligion heads a revolution it becomes a reformation ; and, 
finally, that it should get nearer in spirit and in life to 
him who was the intimate friend of the poor, whom the 
common people gladly heard, and who never hesitated 
one instant to proclaim ideas which he knew would over- 
throw the existing conditions of society. 

To do these things with wisdom, foresight, firmness, 
remembering that he who believes does not make haste, 
but believing that God is educating all men to perfec- 
tion, that Christ has redeemed all men, and will complete 
that redemption, that the "Divine Spirit is now revealing 
more and more of Truth to the world, and that the 
world is growing by that truth, will rescue men from 
scepticism ; and many years will not pass by before we 
know, even more fully than now, what Jesus meant 
when he said, " I have yet many things to say unto you, 
but ye cannot bear them now." 



THE LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL 
CRITICISM* 

1871. 

"Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good." — I. Thess. v., 21. 

I am going to-day to speak of the point in the late 
Privy Council judgment which affects the question of 
the liberty of Biblical criticism in the Church of 
England. 

Some years ago, in the judgment pronounced in the 
case of the Essays and Reviews, a large freedom of inter- 
pretation and of criticism of the Bible was granted, or 
appeared to be granted, to the Church. That freedom 
was gratefully accepted, and freely used. The results 
have been remarkable. The Bible, approached in the 
same manner as we approach any other book, has gained 
in reality, in interest, and in power. Its human and 
its spiritual sides have both been brought into greater 
prominence. Its literary and intellectual interest has 
been more widely recognized. It has become not less 
the book of religious circles, but more the book of Hu- 
manity. And these gains have been in proportion to 
the loss of those mystical and infallible qualities which 
have been imputed to it in the past, and which had 

* A sermon suggested by the judgment pronounced in the case of Mr. Voysey. 



LIBEETY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 149 



relegated it to a region in which all exercise of the 
reason upon it was pronounced either impious or dan- 
gerous. No true book suffers from being removed out 
of the misty valley of superstition and placed in the 
mountain air of honest inquiry ; and the Bible is not less 
reverenced or loved by us, but more, now that we have 
subjected it for some years to the ordinary critical tests. 
The pure gold of the book shines brighter, and is recog- 
nized more quickly, now that we try to separate it from 
the alloy ; and the alloy itself has become interesting for 
its historical and human value. Formerly, when both 
were considered equally divine, both suffered from the 
confusion. It is easy to see what follows when alloy is 
maintained to be gold, and gold to be alloy. 

Well, it has seemed to many, both within and without 
the liberal ranks, that the late judgment takes away 
from us this freedom. It appears to them to say, first, 
that no passage in the Scriptures may be subject to free 
criticism which relates to faith or morals; secondly, that 
no passage may be so interpreted as to contradict an- 
other ; and, thirdly, that no individual criticism is allow- 
able at all, and that this last restriction is in fact a 
death-blow to criticism altogether. 

But criticism has already done its work ; and what are 
its sure results? 

According to any true principle of interpretation, the 
books of the Bible must be subjected to the same tests 
as all other books. Are there passages which belong to 
the sphere of physics ? Then they are to be subjected 
to precisely the same strict inquiry as any physical 
hypothesis is subjected to by a natural philosopher ; and, 
as they answer the inquiry, they are to be accepted as 
true or rejected as erroneous, 



150 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



Many of the Biblical statements have not stood that 
test ; and at once we come to the conclusion that, what- 
ever inspiration may mean, it does not include infallibil- 
ity on these points. We deny that the writers knew 
more on these subjects than any other men of the time 
at which they wrote. The discovery of Galileo, in fact, 
settled this point. 

Unfortunately, the idea of a Bib heal infallibility still 
lingers among men, and the spiritual power of the Bible 
is still involved with its accuracy on physical questions. 
Whether the question be one of geology, or a new the- 
ory of species, or the descent and age of man, there is 
still a battle to save this book from being pronounced in 
error, a series of reconciliations are still proposed. 

These attempted reconciliations only serve to bring 
the Bible into discredit, partly because, as science goes 
on, they are one by one proved inadequate, partly be- 
cause they contradict and disprove one another, and 
wholly because they all try to make the words of Script- 
ure mean something else than a common-sense interpre- 
tation, such as we would give to the same statements in 
any other book, would lead us to adopt. They seem to 
me waste of time and labor in support of a wrong notion. 
I do not say that it is a matter of indifference to me 
whether the Bible be proved in accordance with modem 
science or not ; for I should feel, if it were in accordance 
with modern science, that the wisdom of Inspiration 
might be fairly challenged. To link modern knowledge 
to a spiritual revelation given to men who had no mod- 
ern knowledge would have injured their reception of 
that revelation. If Moses had told the people of Israel 
that the earth went round the sun in the same breath as 



LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 151 



he told them that the Lord their God was one Lord, the 
total incredibility with which they would receive the 
first would lead them to be as incredulous of the second. 
A revelation must' be given in accordance with the 
knowledge of the time, or it will be rejected. On dis- 
tinct grounds, its truth and its use are outside of the 
sphere of jmysical truth. 

Under this head comes, of course, the very important 
question of miracles. Miracles seem to directly contra- 
dict the root theories of science. There are many factors 
in the question, which have to be discussed in any thor- 
ough treatment of it : whether natural sequence really 
and necessarily is invariable ; whether matter really ex- 
ists, or is essentially nothing but force ; and then whether 
force is anything but will or thought ; and then whether 
the whole universe is not actually the will or thought of 
God. And, should the latter ever admit of proof, then 
the miracle would certainly seem to be thinkable, and 
therefore less improbable than the existence of matter, 
which most people accept, but which is philosoi)hically 
unthinkable. Be our theories about miracle, however, 
what they may, as a miracle is plainly something out of 
the ordinary sequence of things, any alleged miracle 
ought to be most severely investigated ; and, if any other 
explanation than a miraculous one is fairly allowable, 
that explanation ought to be received. I claim the free- 
dom of criticism, therefore, on the miraculous element in 
the Bible, because, unless the question be discussed with 
liberty, we shall never arrive at any intellectual certainty 
on the possibility, for instance, of a miracle like the 
Resurrection. 

Passing to another point, we claim the liberty to sub- 



152 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



mit to free criticism the historical portions of the sacred 
Scrij^tures. Things necessary to salvation we believe, 
but it can hardly be said that a belief in the infallible 
accuracy of the whole history is necessary to salvation. 
Moreover, if such a belief is demanded of us, one proved 
inaccuracy is fatal to the whole ; and it is almost ridic- 
ulous to bind up the historical reality of the account of 
the Passion of Christ with the historical reality of the 
story of the dispersion at Babel. 

Criticism has proved that there are discrepancies in 
the historical books ; it has rendered it more than prob- 
able that the more archaic narratives in Genesis and else- 
where are of little historical value ; it has shown that the 
authors of many of the books were not contemporaries of 
the events narrated, and that the details are necessarily 
traditional, and share in the uncertainty of traditions. 

Whatever inspiration means, it does not guarantee his- 
torical infallibility ; and the history of the Bible is open 
to the same sort of criticism as that which we bestow on 
any other history. 

Such criticism — once we have laid aside the theory of 
infallible inspiration — has not in its results done any 
wrong to the Bible, but the contrary. The book is not 
less, but more, reverenced by us, now that it makes no 
longer impossible claims on our belief. The critical and 
careful laying aside of that which we found mistaken, 
temporary, and local in it, has brought out more clearly 
than before that which is divine, spiritual, and perma- 
nent in it. And the historical record, freed from the 
superstitious claims made for it, has given up that which 
is true in it, and become of the greatest possible interest 
and value, 



LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 153 



If it is no longer lawful, for example, to say that Saint 
Paul changed his opinion on some points as he grew 
older, so that passages in his later Epistles appear to be 
at variance with passages in his earlier Epistles ; if we 
can no longer point out the differences which exist be- 
tween the first three and the fourth Gospels, differences 
which I myself think can be embraced into a unity, but 
which apparently exist ; if criticism be not allowed to 
play freely round these and similar points, — then we are 
simply put back to the time when men forgot the spirit 
and life of the sacred Scriptures in a theory of their in- 
fallibility, when reason was sacrificed to a superstitious 
idea of an inspiration which was independent of the 
writer's character and growth, when interpreters, in- 
stead of asking what the writer really meant when he 
wrote, set themselves to force the expressions of the 
writer into what they wished him to say. 

And, as to discrepancies and contradictions, if it is 
incumbent on us to say, in the face of the Scriptures 
themselves, that there is no discrepancy between, for 
instance, the two accounts of the flood in Genesis, or no 
inconsistencies in the narrative of the Gospels, or nothing 
irreconcilable in the genealogies of Christ ; or that there 
are no contradictions between the Books of Kings and 
Chronicles; if we are forced to begin again the old 
miserable, useless labor of harmonizing and reconciling 
accounts, with the clear knowledge now, not only that 
they cannot be perfectly harmonized, but also that, if 
they could, it would be fruitless work, — then we are in- 
deed depraving our teaching of the Bible by uniting it 
to falsehood in ourselves, and depraving the Bible itself. 

The whole question of the authorship of the books 



154 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



both of the Old and New Testaments must also be left 
open. It cannot be suppressed by any pretence that it 
does not exist. In the case of the Old Testament, it has 
been already far and wide assumed that the authorship 
of the books is an open question. No one denies that 
the books are canonical, but we have felt quite free to 
discuss the date of composition of the several books of 
the Pentateuch and the various ages of their fragments ; 
to divide Isaiah as we have it between the prophet of 
that name and another writer of the Captivity ; to trace 
insertions from earlier times in Isaiah and the various 
prophets; to relegate Ecclesiastes to a much later date 
than Solomon ; to freely treat the authorship of all the 
books as a question to be determined by historical crit- 
icism. The judgment has not pronounced against this 
liberty of ours with regard to the Old Testament, and 
we now claim the same liberty with regard to the 
authorship of the books of the New Testament. 

The notion that their authority as a rule of faith de- 
pends entirely on their authenticity arises out of the 
theory of a special inspiration differing in kind from that 
given to" other good and holy men, a notion wholly, I 
think, unsuj^orted by the Scriptures themselves. That 
the writers were inspired by God, I believe to be true ; 
that holy men of old wrote as they were moved by the 
Holy Spirit, I believe to be true : but were only those 
inspired whose names are handed down to us, does God 
inspire no one now, do no men speak now moved by the 
Holy Ghost? Many do so, for God has not ceased to 
act on men. 

The next and last thing I shall discuss is the inference 
which some have drawn from the judgment that we are 



LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 155 

not permitted to explain any passage having reference to 
.faith or morals in a sense at variance with any other. 
But we need not trouble ourselves about inferences. A 
judgment such as this speaks only, of course, of that 
which lies before it. Nor, indeed, could the judgment 
intend that such an inference should be drawn by any 
one. If it meant its words to have full value on this 
point, they would directly take away the power of stat- 
ing views about the Scriptures which the Scriptures 
themselves encourage us to state. 

Take, first, questions of faith. The doctrine of Im- 
mortality is a question of faith. We hear nothing of 
immortality in the earlier books of the Old Testament. 
There are even passages which aj:>parently deny it along 
with others which apj>arently assert it. It would be 
difficult, for example, to say that this passage in Heze- 
kiah's prayer, " The grave cannot praise thee, death 
cannot celebrate thee, they that go down into the pit 
cannot hope for thy truth," is not somewhat at variance 
with " I have a desire to dejDart and to be with Christ, 
which is far better." 

The doctrine of a Sacrifice for Sins is a matter of 
faith, but the mode in which the Old Testament con- 
ceived it during the Mosaic dispensation is expressly 
said in the Ej)istle to the Hebrews to be replaced by 
another, " He taketh away the first that he may establish 
the second." And when a covenant is expressly declared 
to be made old, as it is in this Epistle, to be decayed and 
ready to vanish away before a new one, it can scarcely 
be denied- that there are some things in the old with 
which the new may be at variance. 

The doctrine declared in the second commandment 



156 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the chil- 
dren was a matter of faith to those to whom it was 
given. But the prophet Ezekiel, having reached a 
higher spiritual level, directly contradicts it; and it is 
said that the whole chapter (the eighteenth) was so 
startling to the Masters of the Synagogue, as seeming to 
contradict the Pentateuch, that they hesitated to include 
Ezekiel in the canon. "The fathers have eaten sour 
grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." " As 
I live, saith the Lord God, there shall be no more this 
proverb in the house of Israel." "The son shall not 
bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father 
bear the iniquity of the son ; the righteousness of the 
righteous shall be uj)on him, and the wickedness of the 
wicked shall be upon him." In fact, the chapter itself, 
as a whole ; and the history of the dismay of the Rabbis 
at its repugnancy to another part of sacred Scripture is 
a death-blow to such a statement as some suppose they 
ought to infer from the judgment. 

We claim then, on the ground of the sacred Scriptures 
themselves, liberty to contrast passages in them which 
pertain to matters of faith with other passages, and to 
say that they may be at variance with one another ; and 
that this is, on the supposition of a progressive revela- 
tion, necessarily so. 

Again, with regard to matters of morals. The rela- 
tions of wife to husband are a matter of morality. 
Christ himself reverses the Mosaic conception, and re- 
places it by the ideal one. " And they said, Moses suf- 
fered to write a bill of divorcement and to \mt her away. 
And Jesus answered, For the hardness of your heart he 
wrote you this precept." And then he reverses the 



LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CELTICISM. 157 



precept in "a counsel of perfection," ending with this 
phrase, " What therefore God hath joined together, let 
no man put asunder." 

It was lawful under the Mosaic law to claim an eye 
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and orders are said to 
be given by God to the Israelites " not to seek the peace 
or the good of their enemies, the Moabites, forever. 
Christ reverses both these when he says, "Love your 
enemies, bless them which curse you, do good to them 
that hate you," in another counsel of perfection. 

The keej)ing of the Sabbath is considered part of the 
moral law. The mode of keeping it enjoined in the 
Pentateuch is put aside even in the Prophets, is de- 
cidedly ])ujb aside in the Gospels, is still more decidedly 
put aside in the Epistles. "Ye observe days and months 
and times and years," said Saint Paul. " I am afraid of 
you, lest I have bestowed on you labor in vain." That 
is a passage which can hardly be said not to be at vari- 
ance with a hundred passages in the Old Testament. 

We claim, then, the right which the Scriptures them- 
selves give us to interpret passages which relate to moral 
action in a manner repugnant to others, when those 
others are plainly at variance with the highest morality 
taught us in the Bible. We say that we must expect 
this variance ; for Christ has taught us, and the Epistles 
in various passages carry out this teaching, that the rev- 
elation given in the Bible is a progressive revelation. 

Now, a progressive revelation assumes that the revela- 
tion given is proportioned to the moral sense of those 
who receive it. As much and no more than they can 
aspire to is given. To give the morality of the Gospels 
to the savage and ignorant Jews of the desert would 



158 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



have been absurd. It would have been like giving to 
a boy who has just mastered the first book of Euclid 
the Principia of Newton as his next study. To ask of 
Joshua's army that it should do good to its enemies 
would have been as much out of the question. 

The morality taught in the Pentateuch is the morality 
of a primer : the morality of the earlier Psalms is higher, 
the morality of the Prophets is higher still. As the 
nation advanced through the revelation given, — the rev- 
elation being always somewhat in advance of the natural 
morality, — new revelations, higher and higher still, each 
containing the germs of that which was to follow it, 
grew up in the minds of the best men, under the work 
of God's Spirit, and were given through them to the 
people ; and the conclusion is that we must not demand 
more from the nation or the writings than the time 
allows us, we must not ask the morality of Isaiah from 
Samuel, nor the morality of Saint John from Isaiah. 
We must expect to find many things in the earlier books 
of the Old Testament at variance with the morality of 
the Prophets, still more at variance with the morality of 
the Gospels. "We have an actual right, then, from our 
Christian point of view, to say that many things attrib- 
uted to God in the Old Testament, such as the com- 
mands to utterly annihilate the Canaanites, are wrongly 
attributed to God, and that many things called good, as 
when Jael is blessed for the slaughter of Sisera, and 
others, are the product of the imperfect morality of the 
time, though we must also remember, first, how divine 
the morality is which is mixed up with these things, how 
far beyond anything we possess in books of contemporary 
or even of later age are the leading truths of revelation 



LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 159 



in the several Old Testament books ; and, secondly, that 
these things in which we see a morality at variance with 
that of the Gospels were not unnatural nor horrible at 
the time, and that, if we had lived ourselves at the time, 
our conscience would not have been violated by them at 
all. Nay, it would be quite possible for some of us in a 
moment of passionate j)atriotism to sing as Deborah did, 
and to break into praise of one who should assassinate 
a tyrant as doing the work of God, as some did here 
when Orsini made his attempt. Nor have we quite for- 
gotten how not very long ago we claimed our merciless 
slaughter of the Hindoos, in which whole villages of 
innocent persons suffered, as the vengeance of God 
himself. 

On the ground, then, that the revelation given in the 
Bible is a progressive one with regard to faith and 
morals, passing from less j:>erfect to more perfect, and on 
the authority of the Bible itself, we claim the right to a 
free criticism of passages relating to faith and morals, 
taking in this case as our standard the ideal of faith and 
morality given in the accepted teaching of Christ. We 
claim the right to say that it is, in itself, a depraving of 
Scripture and a denial of its whole idea of the progres- 
sive disclosure of more and more perfect things to take 
without any modification many of the statements of the 
Old Testament as binding now on faith and morals, or 
to understand many passages as not at variance with the 
faith and morals revealed to us in the received teaching 
of Christ. 

It may be thought that the whole of this statement 
contradicts the seventh Article, in which it is said that 
the Old Testament is not contrary to the New. It is 



160 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



not so : the whole argument is based on that continuity 
of a progressive revelation which asserts that the rev- 
elation in the Old Testament contained the germs out of 
which developed, century after century, the revelation 
in the New. The New Testament fulfils, explains, and 
completes the Old. One spirit, one set of truths, run 
through both. But that by no means implies that every- 
thing in the one is in strict accordance, on subjects of 
faith and morals, with everything in the other, or that 
everything in the books of each, on such subjects, is in 
accordance. On the contrary, it implies that such ac- 
cordance cannot be. The tree, at each stage of its 
growth, differs from the sapling, though the same life 
and the same idea runs through all its stages, though 
every stage of its growth supposes the next. 

You may say, How am I in this difficulty to judge as 
to what is permanent or not, divine or not, necessary to 
salvation or not in the Bible? All authority is taken 
away from me. Not quite : there is the moral consensus 
of the time in which you live, a consensus which lias 
been developed by the slow action of Christianity upon 
the world, and which is, in itself, I believe, the work of 
the divine spirit of God on humanity. Any plain con- 
tradiction of that consensus, whether in faith or morals, 
in the Bible, cannot be in it of divine or permanent 
value. We are bound to reject it as part of the rule 
of faith, unless we deny that our present standard of 
morality is the work of God, a denial which would be 
practical atheism. 

Ultimately, in our personal life, the appeal for author- 
ity is made to the spirit of God in us, who verifies for us 
his own work. But he verifies it in no preternatural 



LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 161 



manner, but through the means of spiritual organs, 
which he assists in their work. What are these " ver- 
ifying faculties," to adopt a term from a well-known 
writer ? Here are some of them : " He that loveth 
knoweth God." " If any man will do his will, he shall 
know of the doctrine." " Whosoever shall not receive 
the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise 
enter therein." " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
shall see God." "He that is of the truth heareth my 
voice." 

These are the faculties whereby we discern the things 
of the spirit of God in the Bible, — a loving and a pure 
heart ; obedience to the known will of God ; the childlike 
spirit ; the being of the truth : to these, the Bible is an 
open book; and he who j)ossesses them, and in whom 
God's spirit is developing them day by day, needs no 
outward authority. Of his own self, he determines what 
is necessary or not necessary to believe in the Scriptures. 

A good deal has been said about the evils of destruc- 
tive criticism. I do not like criticism the aim of which 
is destruction, not truth. But its evils are those which 
time most surely cures, and truth is not destroyed. De- 
structive criticism, when it becomes licentious, cuts its 
own throat ; and it is better to let it arrive at this conclu- 
sion. If you wish to keep its evils alive, the best way to 
do that is to persecute it. If you wish it to produce 
good results by a kind of reflex action, let it have its 
course, — watch it, seize the hints it gives you, let it tell 
you what is really dead in the things it criticises, and 
build up for yourselves a firm edifice of true things by 
constructive criticism. 

Destructive criticism has its evils, but none so great as 



162 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the evils which follow on forbidding criticism altogether. 
To put the clergy back into a position where they will 
have to continually twist their intellect awry and to 
violate the morality of common-sense and to suppress 
the truth, in order to appear to get over Biblical difficul- 
ties, is to encourage a sort of criticism which, far more 
rapidly than any infidel criticism, will destroy with the 
laity not only any respect for the clergy, — and that is 
not unimportant, — but any reverence for the book 
which the clergy are asked to maltreat in the name of 
Truth. 

The time has come when silence on the known results 
of criticism or on unfinished critical inquiries is no longer 
right or prudent. Even if Ave would, we cannot now 
leave to men and women their old opinions. The matter 
is taken out of our hands. The questions which crit- 
icism debates are debated in every workshop, in every 
drawing-room. And are the clergy the only persons on 
whom silence is to be imposed, — we, who ought to be 
beforehand and not behindhand in such discussion on 
things dear to us ? When all the world is inquiring, is 
the pulpit to be the only place where inquiry is for- 
bidden ? Are we, part of whose business is Biblical 
interpretation, to ignore all the efforts of the laity to 
understand the Bible ? When a Christian ministry lags 
behind the knowledge of the time, it must soon come to 
an end ; and its end will be swifter, hastened by a just 
contempt, if it is believed to know truth and to suppress 
it, if it is open to the charge of loving truth less than its 
opinions. It would be, indeed, a deadly blow to the 
Church of England if this judgment meant, as some 
think it means, that all searchers for truth have no 
business within its pale. 



LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 163 



I cannot think that the judgment means this, and we 
wait to know clearly what it does mean. But meantime 
we cannot be silent. 

We call upon all, ministers and people, to inquire 
after truth, and to hold it as the first of virtues without 
which all other virtues become corrupt. We have no 
sympathy with its intemperate pursuit, nor with the 
notion that overthrowing everything is the way to find 
it. It ought to be pursued by a slow, sober, just, 
patient effort, based upon the principle that in all error 
there is a grain of truth hidden by which the error lives, 
the loss of which grain, by our heady violence, will 
vitiate our conclusion. We shall not be afraid of fac- 
ing criticism on the Scriptures ; but we should subject 
criticism itself to critical tests, and weigh its conclusions 
well. Nothing is easier than destructive criticism, and 
nothing is more intellectually contemptible than the 
hasty acceptance of its inferences by persons whose 
delight is to contradict received opinions. The sudden 
determination of questions which have employed the 
intellect of centuries by men who have a constitutional 
infirmity of seeing only one side of a thing is an inso- 
lence done to the love of truth. A slow sobriety in 
balancing the results of criticism, and in judgment, is 
one of our greatest wants. There is no need of hurry. 
We have an eternity before us in which to arrive at 
truth ; but, because we have eternity before us, we must 
not neglect the endeavor to discover truth : for such 
neglect will have its results in the enfeebling of the 
organs by which truth is found ; and neither in this 
world nor in the next is knowledge given to feebleness. 
The Bible will not lose, but gain, from the process de- 



164 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



voutly but sternly performed. Its truths, as they 
a]Dpear, freed from the mist of human error, will be all 
the more dear to us because they have been told to us 
by men who shared in our common humanity. It will 
no longer be set up as the opponent of reason, but as in 
harmony with it ; and, the intellect satisfied, will leave 
free room to the spirit to receive its wise and tender 
lessons. It will sj^eak to the heart in the heart's own 
language. Its human lives, and the history of their 
guidance by God, will tell us that we are also guided 
and cared for by him. The principles of its profound 
national morality, as declared by the Prophets, will pass 
into our national life. Its psalms and prayers will ex- 
press for us the wants and sorrow and joy of our souls, 
and deepen, by expression, our religious life. Its his- 
tory of the continuity of religious life will unite us to 
the whole past of humanity, and, while it makes us at 
one with Abraham and David and Isaiah, teach us to be 
at one with Socrates and Aurelius and Confucius. And 
its central figure Christ, where all these things meet and 
mingle into sinless unity, — where the Fatherhood of 
God and the Sonhood of Humanity reveal themselves ; 
where all that is divine is made human, and all that is 
truly human is exalted to the divine ; where the past 
revelation fulfilled its imperfections, and in whom the 
future revelation is contained in germ, — in whom Love 
and Truth and Purity met together to give us a per- 
sonal revelation of the character of God, will have his 
redeeming, consoling, and exalting j^ower on our souls. 

But any attempt to maintain opinions about the Bible 
which science is every day proving more and more to be 
erroneous and absurd, and any attempt to check inquiry, 



LIBEETY OF BIBLICAL CELTICISM. 165 



can only bring down manifold disasters upon the Church. 
The stream of freed Biblical criticism once let loose 
cannot now be dammed up without danger. Its waters 
will collect behind the dam, and the feeble barrier will 
give way. But, in the rush of the conglomerated waters, 
not only the barrier, but the very foundations of the 
present constitution of the Church, may be swept away. 



THE ATONEMENT. 
1871. 

" Lord, how are they increased that trouble me ? Many are they 
that rise up against me. Many there be which say of my soul, There 
is no help for him in God. But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me ; 
my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. I cried unto the Lord with 
my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill." — Psalm iii., 1, 2, 3, 4. 

This is a morning i^salm, as the fourth, which follows 
it, is an evening psalm. There is a high probability 
that the tradition which refers them both to the time 
when David fled from Absalom's advance to Mahanaim 
is a true tradition. The third psalm Avould then belong 
to the first morning after that on which David left 
Jerusalem, and the fourth to the evening following. 

David left Jerusalem early in the morning. He passed 
through the outskirts, over the brook Kidron, and took 
the ascent of Olivet, amid the loud wailing of the people 
of the city. He reached the mountain-top at noon: 
there he met Hushai, and sent him back to confound the 
counsel of Ahitophel. As he descended the rugged path 
on the other side, there rained upon his head the stones 
and curses of Shimei, adding their store of sorrow to 
that which was too much. It was not till evening fell 
that he reached the ford of Jordan. 

There he snatched a short slumber, while he waited 



THE ATONEMENT. 



167 



for the news of how things were going in Jerusalem. 
"I laid me down, and slept." At midnight, he was 
roused with the message, "All is safe for a time; the 
pursuit is delayed; get over the river at once to Maha- 
naim." David sj)rang to his feet, his old energy return- 
ing. " I rose up again, for the Lord sustained me " ; 
and at break of day they had all reached the other side 
in safety. 

Then, as the sun rose, making into a blaze of glory all 
the dew-drenched western bank, — seeming like God's 
summons to activity, — David's impulsive poet-heart 
began to thrill with gratitude and courage, and this 
psalm rushed in a moment to his lips. 

If this be true, a vivid interest draws us to the psalm. 
It is the unpremeditated expression of the passionate 
feeling of a great man's heart at a great crisis in his life. 
We seem to look for a moment into his inmost heart. 

It is in times like these that we see character. Men 
are true when passion is profound. The first agony of 
sorrow w^ears no mask. Anger, at its fiercest, lays the 
secrets of the heart bare. Fear is a magic glass, through 
which we see the lon^-hidden evil or weakness of the 
soul. Joy at deliverance has the same power. 

This is still more true when the character is impulsive, 
and the impulsiveness is under the power of a strong 
will. Such a character had David, — impulsive, always 
ready to gratify or express the feelings of the moment, 
but capable now and then of holding them in with the 
steadiest curb. When the curb was withdrawn by the 
will, then, only observe how most of his psalms burst out 
with a cry, like the leap forward of a beautiful wild ani- 
mal held in bonds too long. 



168 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



And David's passion and David's impulsiveness, now 
at their height, swelled by the repression of twenty-four 
hours, — swelled by an awful sorrow, swelled by a terrible 
anger, — were suddenly let loose by the sense of safety. 
He looked round upon his followers, and rejoiced; he 
felt the exhilaration of the morning; he saw the sun rise, 
like hope, after a night of storms. Silence seemed 
shameful in that moment, and the psalm arose into life. 

How the words came rushing like waters. "Jeho- 
vah!" — mark the cry at the beginning, — "how many 
are become my oppressors; many are they that rise 
against me. Many say of my soul, Xo help has he in 
God." 

But yesterday a king, and now an exile. Only yester- 
day in his own city, the people weeping for love and 
sorrow round him! What were they doing now? And 
David heard, in the ear of his imagination, the shouts 
which welcomed Absalom, the darling of the people: 
"The king is dead. Long live the king!" fancied the 
sneer and scoff which circulated among the rebel offi- 
cers; caught the sleek murmur of Ahitophel's insidious, 
hateful voice ; and saw with startling distinctness among 
the crowd the face of Shiniei sharj)ened with hate. He 
realized the thought which gleamed in every eye and 
hung on every lip. "They say of my soul," he cried, 
"there is no help for him in God ! " 

Such is the judgment of the world. Misfortune means 
GocVs anger. Is that judgment true? That is the first 
question the psalm suggests. 

We answer, first, that God is never angry in our sense 
of the word. Sacred indignation at evil is inseparable 
from his being, because it is the natural repulsion of 



THE ATONEMENT. 



169 



holiness from sin ; but from this we must, so far as we 
can in thought, remove all suspicion of angry passion. 
It is all but impossible for us to do this, for it is so 
rarely in our lives that we feel unmixed indignation. 
Jealousy steps in ; sometimes fear, sometimes a wish to 
display, sometimes wounded vanity, sometimes selfish 
motives, till at last, or in a moment, indignation is de- 
graded into violence, and violent passion brings about 
revenge. 

It is owing to this almost necessary inability to con- 
ceive pure indignation that the idea of God's wrathful 
anger has taken such lodgement in the heart of men. 
Few superstitions — I call it such, for it is born of igno- 
rance and fear — have ever done more harm in the 
world. It lay at the root of the popular cry which 
forced persecution on the Roman governors ; the gods 
were jealous of their honor. It has lain at the root of 
all persecutions : of the cruelties of the inquisitors, who 
attributed to God the desire to revenge himself upon 
the Jews, and the nursing of endless rancor against 
heretics; of the jDersecution of those sects who repre- 
sented God as vindictive, vain, and touchy. It has lain 
at the root of the perishing doctrine of eternal punish- 
ment. 

It is the superstition which the Church of Christ ought 
above all to cast out now. It is the thing above all else 
on which we want clear notions. 

How shall I best explain it, illustrate it? What is 
God's indignation? It is love doing justice. Suppose 
that you saw in the streets a brutalized man beating 
a woman : your feeling would be indignation, you would 
inflict punishment ; but there would be, for the most 



170 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



part, feelings of contempt, of violent anger, of horror, 
combined with your indignation. In vindicating the 
woman's cause, there would be no pity for the man. 
That is anger doing justice. But the indignation of 
God would }3unish as severely as you, more severely in 
the end ; but there would be no anger in the sense of 
passion ; and there would be infinite pity, compassion, 
and love for the man, more so than even for the woman. 
" So lost, so brutalized, so fallen, — my son, I must redeem 
him." This is love doing justice : this is the indignation 
of God. The offender is ]^unished, the sin is abhorred, 
but the offender is not detested : the tie of Fatherhood 
is not dissolved, the necessity of saving the lost is not 
forgotten. " You have done this wrong," God says to 
you and me: "you must suffer for it. I am a consuming 
fire to your evil. But I do not love you less : my love 
is shown in insisting on the punishment. For the pain 
points to the disease, and says to you, 1 Get rid of the 
evil thing, or you die.' " 

Moreover, anger like ours is capricious, easily roused, 
easily lost ; punishes too much or too little ; does not fit 
the punishment to the guilt, so that it may seem natural 
to the guilty and touch the conscience, but takes what- 
ever j>unishment lies next to hand. TVant of justice, 
want of balancing all the motives and circumstances on 
both sides, want of natural fitness, characterize the inflic- 
tions of our anger ; for it has no time for all this slow 
work, and no thoughtfulness. Let it wait to work or 
think, and it ebbs away like Esau's, or quickens into 
revengefulness like Saul's. 

There is an absolute freedom from all these faults in 
the indignation of God, and it is this which gives it its 



THE ATONEMENT. 



171 



awfulness. It is based on law, or, I should say, on the 
eternal truthfulness of God to himself. If God ceased 
to punish wrong-doing, he would cease to be God ; if he 
did not apportion the exact measure of punishment to 
the wrong, making it the natural result, and felt as such, 
of the sin ; if he did not see the wrong in all its excuses 
and all its aggravations, and make both tell, and be felt 
as telling, in the punishment, he could not be the just 
Omniscient Being we conceive him to be. If he acted 
hastily, and without full thought of the results of the 
punishment upon the character of the person punished, 
we could not believe in his love. 

It is not, remember, that indignation is modified by 
love, or love modified by justice : there are no argumen- 
tative elements in God's nature, things which j)lead and 
reply, and replead and re-reply within him. If we had 
more reverence for God's unity, we should be more in- 
dignant at representations of him which make his heart 
like a court of law, in which his attributes are advocates 
for and against the criminal. His love is his justice, his 
justice is his love, his mercy is both love and justice, and 
his indignation is the inevitable expression (according to 
the unalterable nature of his being) of his character in 
contact with sin in the jDersons of his children. It is 
punishment ; but it must be merciful as well as just pun- 
ishment. 

So far, then, the fact of misfortune coming to a man 
proves that he has erred against some law, and that, in 
consequence, God is indignant with him. It may be 
only his own unconscious transgression of some j)hysical 
law, or it may be that his parents have transgressed 
some law of health. In that case, the indignation of God 



172 



FAITH A2sD FEEEDOM. 



carries with it no moral blame : it is simply the expres- 
sion of law. It may be that he has erred against his 
own sense of the moral law, and that remorse has fol- 
lowed ; or that he has knowingly broken some physical 
law by excess, and that disease has followed. In that 
case, he recognizes himself that the spiritual or the tem- 
poral misfortune proves that God is indignant with him; 
but it does not prove that God has ceased to love him, — 
least of all, that he has forgotten him. It proves the 
exact contrary. Wherever there is indignation, there 
must be his love ; wherever there is ]3unishment, there 
must be his remembrance. 

The cry of the Jewish world, "There is no help for 
David in God," was hopelessly wrong; and the really 
noble and grand thing, as we shall see, was that in the 
very midst of the punishment David knew that they 
were wrong. 

But there is another answer to the question, Does mis- 
fortune j>rove God's anger? In the case of the guilty, 
it proves, as we have seen, God's indignation. But, in 
the case of the innocent, it proves God's love for the 
race. Suppose an innocent man surfers : what has often 
been the verdict of the world? It says, "There is a 
crime beneath the seeming innocence, or he would not 
suffer." That was the judgment of the friends of Job, 
and the Book of Job gives the Old Testament answer to 
this blind opinion. The complete answer is in the death 
and suffering of Christ. It has been written there for 
all the world to read that its stupid maxim is wrong. 
Suffering does not always prove God's anger, nor prove 
the sufferer's sin. If increase of love were possible, 
never did the Father so deeply love the Son as at the 



THE ATONEMENT. 



173 



hour of the cross ; if increase of righteousness were pos- 
sible, never was the Son more sinless than in that hour 
of human agony and apparent defeat. 

Nevertheless, it is astonishing how strongly this super- 
stitious view of God's anger clings to the minds of men. 
It has vitiated the whole view taken of the atonement 
by large numbers of the Church of Christ. They are un- 
consciously influenced by the thought that where there 
is suffering there must be sin. The cross is suffering: 
therefore, somewhere about the sufferer there must be 
sin, and God must be angry. But Christ had no sin: 
then what does the suffering mean ? Their suppressed 
premise, the maxim, puts them into a sad dilemma. 

At last, light comes to them, — not spiritual, but logical 
light, — and the thing is clear. Man sins ; and sin against 
an Infinite Being is infinite, and deserving of infinite 
punishment. A debate takes place in the nature of God. 
Justice says : " I must punish. I will take the law." 
Mercy replies, " Have pity ! " " ISTo," answers Justice : 
"I must have my bond." Then Love steps in. "Is 
there no way to make mercy and justice at one ? The 
Son of God is infinite. Let him bear as man the infinite 
jmnishnient ; let the sins of the race lie upon him ; let 
Justice exact from him the forfeited bond; let God's 
anger be poured upon his head. Then, Justice being 
satisfied, Mercy can have her gracious way." And this 
was done ; and the cross is no exception to the maxim, 
Where there is suffering, there is God's anger. I do not 
say that this theory was consciously elaborated out of 
the maxim, but it is certainly its child. It wears on its 
brow the traces of its worldly paternity. It is entirely 
a work of the mere reasoning faculty, though a special 



174 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



spirituality is curiously claimed for it. There is not a 
trace of an intuition in it. The intuitions are all against 
it. It outrages the moral sense : if I murdered a man 
to-morrow, would justice be satisfied if my brother came 
forward and offered to be put to death in my stead ? It 
outrages the heart. It makes a Father who is perfect 
love pour his wrath upon a guiltless Son at the moment 
when the Son in perfect love chose to die for men. It 
outrages our idea of God. It makes him satisfied with a 
fiction. It makes his notion of justice totally different 
from that which he has given us. It represents the All- 
Wise as in a painful dilemma, out of which he can only 
escape by a subterfuge. It divides his nature, setting 
one part of it in opposition with another, — mercy 
against justice, — and so destroys all conception of his 
self-unity. 

It is altogether so crowded with inconsistencies, though 
so logical if the premises are allowed, that I know no 
greater proof of the utter incapability of the mere intel- 
lect to deal with sj)iritual things, no greater proof of the 
truth of the text, " The natural man understaudeth not 
the things of the S])irit, for they are spiritually dis- 
cerned," than the wide prevalence of this forensic view 
of the Atonement. For this theory is only the work of 
the understanding, — only the work, not of the spiritual 
but of the natural man, — in the minds of the many noble 
and Christian men who hold it. 

Having rejected this theory, we repeat our question, 
What does misfortune, suffering, coming to the innocent, 
mean? We have seen that it cannot mean, as in the 
former case, God's moral indignation. It means the 
exhibition to the world, when the suffering is voluntary, 



THE ATONEMENT. 



175 



even when it is involuntary, of the central principle of 
God's life, the revelation to men that self-sacrifice is life 
eternal ; and, inasmuch as this revelation redeems man, 
it means God's love to the race of man. This is the 
lesson of the Cross. For what is Christ crucified ? It is 
the declaration in time of the eternal self-giving of God, 
— of life forever given away that all may live. 

For the very being of God is in self-sacrifice, if I may 
be allowed to use the word self in order to express my 
meaning. And if vre remove from the notion of sacrifice 
its earthly concomitant of pain, and replace it by perfect 
joy. by that ecstasy of pleasure which in rare moments 
a few in this world have felt when they have given aU 
to bestow blessing and life upon another, — that thrill of 
full and perfect being which made them feel, " This is 
life indeed ! " — then we have some notion of that divine 
life which is God's at every instant of his being. 

Man could not see this : he dimly felt it, but it needed 
to be made clear. So God sent his Son to reveal it in 
our nature. Christ came clothed in our mortal nature, 
and through it lived the sacrificing life of God. But, 
owing to the human nature, the self-giving was neces- 
sarily accomplished, not with perfect joy as God accom- 
plishes it, but with a mixture of keen pain. It was then 
that we saw Love conquering pain ; all the misery of 
rejected affection, the scorn and hatred of men heaped 
upon one sacred teart, and yet the sufferer loving those 
who hated hirm, losing thought of all the ill done to him 
in pity for those who did it, dying for the sake of his 
enemies. And, seeing this, the world beheld the Divine 
Life, understood it, and recognized its beauty. It won 
the love of men. : - If I be lifted up, I will draw all men 



176 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



unto me." It won the love of God. " Therefore doth 
my Father love me, because I lay down my life for the 
sheep." This is the attractive power of the Cross. It 
first attracts Love to itself, and then, by deej)ening Love, 
changes the heart. 

Many explanations have been given of the way in 
which the sacrifice of Christ acts on men as a redeeming 
power, — mystical interpretations, logical schemes, things 
which require theologians to exjriain them. "We will be 
content to find an explanation in that which lies around 
us, in the doings of our common life, falling back on the 
plain principle that the laws of Christ's life were the 
laws of human nature. If we look for it, we shall find 
the law of redemption now and always at work. New 
in proclamation, it was not new in action. "No man, no 
nation, has ever been rescued from degradation, except 
by the same kind of work as that by which God rescues 
the world. 

Take one example out of common life. A widowed 
mother had an only son. All her love, all that regret 
for the dead which transmutes itself into love of the liv- 
ing, centred in him. Her life had but one thought, and 
that made itself into service of him. Every day was a 
long self-devotion to win means for his education and en- 
joyment. But far away in the great city he wastes her 
substance in riotous living. Health makes him thought- 
less, youth makes him cruel, and she is left alone. Only 
returning when his purse or his health is exhausted, she 
forgives him again and again, and again and again he 
abandons her. At last, she dies, and dies for him, still 
hoping, still believing in him, and leaving to him her 
blessing and her love. Her Jong self-sacrifice of life is 
over. 



THE ATONEMENT. 



177 



And he returns to the country village, and in the quiet 
evening stands beside her grave. All his neglect falls 
upon his heart, all her long patience and unbroken ten- 
derness. A spring of love gushes in his soul, and with 
it hatred of his sin, self-loathing, temptation to despair. 
But he remembers that she forgave, he feels himself 
still loved, and in a softening rush of penitence he re- 
solves that she shall be still alive to him. "I will be 
worthy of her yet : with broken and contrite heart, I will 
requite her love by being all she wished me once to be. 
We may meet again, and I will fall at her feet and tell 
her all my sorrow, and show her my repentance." A 
mighty love takes him out of self, and makes the past 
hateful. He thinks no more of his own pleasure, but of 
what would have been her pleasure. That hour has 
redeemed him. He enters on a new life. 

But, observe, it is not primarily redemption from pun- 
ishment. The punishment remains : the pain at his heart 
is keen, so keen that one might almost say the j;>unish- 
ment has only now begun. But it is remedial suffering. 
It keeps her who sacrificed all for him constantly before 
his eyes ; it stings him into new efforts to be worthy of 
her ; it urges him to do for others that which she did 
for him. In this way, the punishment slowly alters itself 
into a means of ennoblement, — a thing which works the 
peaceable fruits of righteousness. Thus, and thus only, 
is he redeemed from punishment. But he is redeemed 
from self, from hardness of heart, from baseness of char- 
acter, from inability to feel punishment, from the sins of 
the past, from the tendency to yield at once to temp- 
tation. 

Is that true or not ? Are there not a million varied 



1T8 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



instances of the same kind occurring in the world around 
us? — friend who so saves friend ; wife who so saves her 
husband ; minister who so saves his people ; men who so 
save a nation. Is not that simple, human, natural, easy 
to be believed in, appealing directly to our reason and 
our affections, worthy of our reverence, irresistibly at- 
tractive ? Then turn and believe in the redemptive 
power of Christ's Atonement, for that is its power. 
What the woman did for her son Christ did for all man- 
kind. What influence in redeeming her son's life from 
self, and in re-creating his life through a profound love 
for an invisible character, she had, though dead, upon 
him, when his soul was touched into seeing the divine- 
ness in her and into believing it as the divine life for 
him, is identical with the influence of the work of 
Christ's life and death upon us, when we see them and 
acknowledge them divine. 

Christ's death was the act in which the exhibition of 
this common law of redemption was concentrated, the 
central representation in history of the means whereby 
life is gained and life is given. And to believe on Christ 
is to look upon his life and death of sacrifice, and to say 
with a true heart: "I know that this is true life. I 
accept it as mine. I will fulfil it in thought and action, 
God being my helper. I see the face of perfect love, and 
I cannot help adoring ; and, as I adore, I feel that love 
like this, which gives all, is the only way of reaching 
the perfect joy of perfect being." 

Then God is received consciously into the soul. Pen- 
itence breaks our heart, and we weep away our sin. 
Knowing that we are forgiven, we forgive ourselves. 
We feel in ourselves new possibilities of nobleness, for 



THE ATONEMENT. 



179 



has not lie loved us ? Our life changes into likeness to 
his life ; for in aspiration after it we imitate it, and in 
contemplating love of it we grow like to that we con- 
template. We are regenerated, " created anew in Christ 
Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained 
that we should walk in them." This is the subjective 
work of the Atonement. 

And, since that has been wrought in the world, what 
effect has it had with regard to our question as to 
whether the suffering of good men proves God's anger 
or, as we said, God's love to the race ? Those who have 
so joined themselves to the spirit of Christ's life know 
that, as long as humanity is humanity, they can only do 
redemptive work through suffering ; for he who opposes 
evil must bear evil. And, knowing this, for the sake of 
the work they gladly accej)t the pain. Nay, more : they 
know that the self-sacrifice, though it is linked to suffer- 
ing, is in itself latent joy, for it is the very life of God; 
and, when men object that it is dreadful that the inno- 
cent should suffer for the guilty, the innocent reply: 
"What is that to you, when we rejoice in it, when we 
accept it as life eternal, when we thank God that he has 
counted us worthy to do a portion on earth of his re- 
deeming work, to be indeed a portion of his ceaseless 
sacrifice ? We know now that to die for men is the 
noblest life ; and if we are, as you say, good and true, 
we are only so in him whose life we follow, and God is 
right to choose those most like his Son to carry on his 
Son's work and to be crucified with him. Our suffering 
does not prove that God is angry with us, but that he 
loves us so well that he has chosen us out of the world 
to manifest him to the world. Our suffering proves that 



180 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



he loves the race ; for through that which is of Christ in 
us he is declaring his character to men, and bringing 
them to follow the true life and to obtain the true joy." 

Again, to pass to another side of the question, it is 
plain that those who feel thus are reconciled to God. 
This reconciliation of man to God is another of the ideas 
of the Atonement. How does it take place ? how is it 
we need reconciliation to God? 

TVe need it, because our first idea of God is a false 
one. Our fear, united with our ignorance, make out of 
themselves a God in whom omnipotence is united to 
human passion, — the God of superstition and fanaticism. 
TTe are angry with and fear this false idea. Creating 
our own God, it is no wonder that we hate him. For of 
what kind is he? One whose might makes his right, 
who doeth what he will, but whose will is unlimited by 
that which we recognize as goodness ; one whose love is 
as arbitrary as his punishment is capricious, who saves 
this creature and slays another for his own glory and at 
his own fancy ; one who asks for slavish worship ; who, 
when he makes us what is called good, does it without 
demanding any effort from the soul ; who requires to be 
propitiated by the sacrifice of reason and conscience, and 
does not tell us why ; who annexes damnation to intel- 
lectual error, and in whose eyes a pure and noble life is 
nothing, if he who lives it mistakes doctrine. I need not 
go through all that has been told us of God by idolatries 
and priesthoods and sects. God's answer to them all is 
this : " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one 
as thyself." 

How could we help rebelling against that Being, how 
be reconciled to him ? Man must rebel against a God 



THE ATONEMENT. 



181 



who reproduces himself when he seeks for power. Bad 
as man is, he cannot bear, when he thinks truly, to 
accept as his ruler one who seems to be as capricious 
as a tyrant, and more dreadful than any earthly tyrant, 
because his power is supreme. 

We are told by some, when we refuse to love this 
God, that the explanation is that the natural man is 
enmity to God. There is a sense in which the natural 
man is enmity to God; but in rejecting a God of this 
character it is not the natural, but the spiritual man 
which acts. It is in asserting this false God, a God 
created by the natural man, that the natural man is 
enmity to the true God. To create an immoral God, 
and to give him an immoral worship of fear and igno- 
rance, is to be an enemy of God. 

In all our best moments, we are incapable of being 
reconciled to this Being. "We can never be at one with 
God, atoned to him, neA^er be reconciled to him, till 
we gain the knowledge of God as he truly is. It was 
part of the Atonement, that part which united us to God, 
that Christ revealed God in his life as he was and is 
for evermore. "He who hath seen me hath seen the 
Father." 

He revealed a Father, and therefore an Educator, who 
will bring his children to himself. He revealed a God of 
compassion and love, whose life was in giving away him- 
self for all his creatures. He revealed One whose will 
was determined by right, and in whom justice and love 
and purity were the same in kind as they are in us, only 
perfect and infinite: One who asked to be loved, not 
feared; to be trusted in, not propitiated by our unmean- 
ing sacrifices. The sacrifices he asked for were such as 
he showed us in his Son : the sacrifice of our own pleas- 



182 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



ore and will when they were opposed to eternal right, 
when they did injury to our fellow-men ; the sacrifice of 
life for the sake of truth and love ; not the sacrifice to 
him of his own gifts whereby he makes himself known, — 
the gifts of reason and conscience and human love. 
Nay, it is to these that he appeals. " Why of your own 
selves judge ye not what is right?" said his Son. "If 
a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 
he love God whom he hath not seen?" said his apostle. 
The God whom Christ revealed chose special men out of 
the world, not that they alone should be saved, but that 
they might be messengers to do his saving work on all ; 
and he chose them not caj^riciously, but because they 
were more loving and true than the rest, and therefore 
better fitted for his work. The God whom Christ re- 
vealed was revealed as one who punished guilt, who 
would not spare retribution, but the punishment was to 
be remedial, and the retribution to be used as a means 
of salvation ; as one who did not replace our effort by 
irresistible and imperial grace, but whose grace enabled 
us to work out, as under a free government, our own 
salvation, and demanded the effort of the soul, that we 
might become each a distinct person with a distinct 
character. And, because allowing of this individuality 
and encouraging it, it follows that the obedience he 
asked was not a blind but a reasonable one, and that, if 
the life was like his Son's, intellectual error was not 
subject to damnation. 

I need not dwell on all the points; but, when this reve- 
lation was made, man was freed from fear and hatred of 
God, man could become at one with God, man was 
reconciled to God. And the gospel truth is this : that, 
once a man really sees and believes in God in Christ, he 



THE ATONEMENT. 



183 



cannot rebel, he cannot hate, he cannot fear, he cannot 
be unreconciled to him. 

There is nothing left to hate or fear. Hate one whom 
we believe to be our Father in all the profound meaning 
of the word ! Fear one who gives his very life for us ! 
It is impossible. Once we believe it, we are saved, — 
saved, first, from our own ignorant and ghastly idea of 
God, which sets all our life wrong ; saved, secondly, 
from our sin, because the true idea of God creates 
infallibly a life in accordance with it. 

And now, in conclusion, and taking the principles we 
have just expounded as our key, has the idea which men 
have of God's anger no truth beneath its error ? 

Yes, this truth : that as long as a man does not know 
God in Christ, does not understand that God is love, and 
love him as a father, he will think that punishment is 
anger, and this belief will make him angry with God. 
For love, exhibited in the process of his education, must 
often take the form of chastisement, and seem wrath to 
him because he does not comprehend its tenderness. 

Suppose a man with a sore disease, and at the same 
time mad. The surgeon approaches with his knife to 
amputate the diseased limb, and cuts deep and relent- 
lessly. The sufferer sees no reason for the infliction of 
the pain, does not believe in the surgeon's kindness, 
whose whole work seems to him mere capricious cruelty. 
It is so with the sinner who does not know God as a 
loving Father. His work to him is often anger. 

But grant that he gains his reason, becomes conscious 
of his disease, desires to be free from it, and knows the 
surgeon's heart : his flesh quivers, his pain is bitter, but 
he understands the meaning of the suffering, and, though 
not one deep incision is spared, he claims the surgeon as 



184 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



his friend, he recognizes his work as the work of love, 
and, if some madman were to say, " See how cruel ; see 
how the man who said he wished your good is working 
you evil," the sufferer would smile the smile of trust 
and pity. " You mistake," he would reply : " I trust my 
friend's tenderness. I knoAV his heart : it is I who pity 
you, if you cannot see his love." It is so with the man 
who believes in the love of God his Father. 

So it was with David. No help for me in God ! God 
angry with me ! God forsaking me ! No, he breaks out : 
" The Lord is my shield, my glory, and the uplifter of 
my head." I know I am being punished for my sin, I 
know I have done wrong to God and man ; but I am not 
so lost as to imagine that punishment means that I have 
no help in God, and not that it means that he is with 
me, yes, more closely than in the days of my prosperity. 
Deserted by God ! ~No ! " I cried unto God with my 
voice, and he heard from his holy hill." 

This is entirely splendid. This is faith overcoming 
the world. This is the trust which brings all the powers 
of the unseen to a man's side. This is the spirit which 
gives elasticity to life, and makes triumph out of mis- 
fortune. This is the spirit which transmutes punishment 
into strength, and sin into goodness. This is the spirit 
which, by believing in the eternal love of God and dis- 
believing in his anger, realizes God as a Father and him- 
self as a son, bound together by immortal bonds, which 
are knit closer by trial as well as by joy. This is the 
belief which makes a life and a character as noble as 
that of this old Hebrew king, who in these early times 
anticipated in experience the profoundest Christian feel- 
ing, and knew by heart the God of the Christians before 
their Christ had come. 



DEVOTION TO THE CONVEN- 
TIONAL. 
1868. 

" Ye stiff -necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always 
resist the Holy Ghost : as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the 
prophets have not your fathers persecuted ? and they have slain them 
which shewed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye 
have been now the betrayers and murderers : who have received the 
law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it." — Acts vii., 
51-53. 

The rejection of Christ by the Jewish people was a 
national sin: it was the act of the whole nation. His 
death was the result of the full development of the then 
Jewish mode of looking at the world : the spirit of the 
age, among the Jews, killed him. 

I put it in that way because the term, a national sin, 
wants a clear definition. It is used at present in a way 
which is quite reckless of any settled meaning. Every 
party, even every sect in the country, declares its oppo- 
nents guilty of a national sin. But a national sin is not 
an evil done by any one party to the nation, but an evil 
done by the nation itself, a direct evil consciously chosen 
and adhered to ; or an evil neglect or blindness which 
takes its rise from the whole tone and spirit of the mass 
of the people. I might mention courses of political 



186 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



action in which England has persisted for years, through 
all changes of party, which are of the character of na- 
tional sins ; but I will content myself with an illustration 
which will not stir up anger. Apart from political acts or 
political opinions, on which the generality of the people 
act, the national sin of the England of to-day is extrava- 
gance, waste of money. From the administration of the 
army and navy down to the administration of the house- 
hold of the poorest dock laborer, there is, generally 
speaking, no conscientious, educated, cultured expendi- 
ture or care of money. The poor are even more extrav- 
agant, more reckless, than the rich. And the dreadful 
punishment which follows on the sin of waste of money 
is this, that the nation becomes blind to the true uses 
of money. It spends nearly fifteen million a year on 
its army and a little more than one million on educa- 
tion, so intense an absurdity that it only seems neces- 
sary to mention it to expose it. It spends ten million a 
year upon its navy, and is so stingy toward the science 
which develops the intellect of the whole peofxLe, and 
toward the art which exalts and refines the soul, as only 
to vote about one hundred thousand a year for these 
objects; so that things the value of which cannot be 
represented in money, and on which great sums have 
been spent, are perishing for want of a little wise ex- 
penditure. We are extravagant where we ought to be 
economical, and economical where we ought to expend 
freely. This is our punishment ; and future Englishmen 
will look back with amazement upon this time, when we 
spent millions on war-shij^s the guns of which cannot be 
served in a fresh breeze, and left, to take one example, 
for want of a few thousands, the noblest specimens of 



DEVOTIOX TO THE C OISTYENTION AL . 187 



Assyrian art to rot rapidly away in a damp cellar in the 
British Museum. Not many months have passed since 
the great representation of a lion-hunt, carved thousands 
of years ago by an artist who puts our animal sculpture 
to shame, and who worked from personal observation of 
the lion in his vigorous contest and in his agony, has 
been placed in that deadly vault. Now, so rapid has 
been the destruction that in certain parts there is 
scarcely a vestige left of the labor of the noble hand, 
and a white fluff of damp, gathering upon the stone, has 
eaten away all the delicate lines and subtle carving over 
a great part of the work. In a few years or so, in spite 
of the glazing, the whole may be corrupt dust. I have 
mentioned this partly in the hope that it will be taken 
up by some one who has some interest left in these sub- 
jects, and some influence to use upon them, and partly 
to show how a national sin, like extravagance, avenges 
itself by stinginess in matters where stinginess is de- 
struction and disgrace. 

But one of the worst of national sins is the rejection 
or the neglect by the mass of the people of the great 
men whom God has sent to save the nation, to teach the 
nation, or to give ideas to the nation. It is a proof of 
the perfect culture of a peoj)le, of its being truly civil- 
ized, in intellect and spirit as well as in prosperity, when 
it recognizes, as it were intuitively, its great men, puts 
them forward at once as rulers, and obeys their guidance. 
It is a proof of its failing power, of its retrogression, of 
its diseased condition, when it neglects, despises, or kills 
its great men. Of this j)roposition, for the two are one, 
history supplies a thousand instances. For the man of 
noble genius, the projxhet or whatever else you call him, 



188 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



is the test of the nation. He exists not only to do his 
own active work, but to passively jDrove what is true 
gold or false ; and as many as he saves he dooms. Those 
are lost who reject him, — the whole nation is lost if the 
whole nation rejects him, — for it is not he so much 
whom it rejects as the saving ideas of which he is the 
vehicle. 

Hence, when such a man appears, the question on 
which hangs the fate of the people is this: TVill the 
nation recognize him or not ? will it envy and destroy 
him, or believe in him and follow him? 

That question, which has again and again been placed 
before the nations of the world, was placed in the most 
complete manner before the Jews at the appearance of 
Christ, the perfect Man, — is placed in him before each 
of us as individual men, — since he was not only the 
representation of that which was noblest in the Jewish 
nation, but of that which is noblest in humanity. Christ 
was the test of the Jewish nation, and his rejection by 
them jn'oved that they were lost as a nation. Christ is 
the test of each of us, and our acceptance or rejection of 
him proves that we are worthy or unworthy of our hu- 
manity. This passive, unconscious work of Christ was 
recognized by the wisdom of the old man Simeon when 
he said, "This child is set for the fall and the rising 
again of many in Israel." It Avas recognized by Christ 
himself in many of his parables, notably when he said, 
"For judgment," i.e., for division, for sifting of the chaff 
from the wheat, "am I come into the world." 

And so it was, wherever he went he was the touch- 
stone of men. Those who were pure, single-eyed, and 
true-hearted saw him, clung to him, and loved him: 



DEVOTION" TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 189 

those who were conscious of their need and sin, weary 
of long searching after rest, and not finding, weary 
of conventionalities and hypocrisies, believed in him, 
drank deep of his Spirit, and found redemj)tion and 
repose. They flew to him as naturally as steel to the 
magnet. Those who were base of heart or false of heart, 
proud of their sin, or hardened in their prosperous hy- 
pocrisy, men who worshipped the mummy of a past relig- 
ion, naturally hated him, recoiled from him, and, to get 
rid of him, hanged him on a tree. 

In doing so, — and this was the deed of the mass of 
the people, — they destroyed their nationality which was 
hidden in their reception of Christ. It is at least a 
curious coincidence with this view that, when the priest- 
hood before Pilate openly rejected Christ as king, they 
did it in these words, — words which repudiated their 
distinct existence as a nation, — " We have no king but 
Cassar." 

He did nothing overt to produce this. He simply 
lived his life, and it acted on the Jewish world as an 
electric current upon water : it separated its elements. 

It will not be without interest to dwell upon some of 
the reasons which caused this rejection of Christ among 
the Jews, and to show how the reasons of the rejection 
or acceptance of Christ are not primarily to be found 
in certain spiritual states or feelings which belong to a 
transcendental region into which men of the world can- 
not or do not care to enter, but in elements of action 
and thought which any man may recognize at work in 
the world around him, and in his own heart ; in reasons 
which are identical with those which cause a nation to 



190 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



reverence or neglect its really great men, to lead a 
noble or an ignoble life. 

The first of these is devotion to the conventional. 

It is practically identical with want of individuality, 
one of the most painful deficiencies in our present 
society. 

Now, the rectification of that evil lies at the root of 
Christianity. Christ came to proclaim and to insure 
the distinct life, the originality, of each man. All the 
principles he laid down, all the teaching of his fol- 
lowers as recorded in the Epistles, tend to produce 
individuality, rescue men from being mingled up, indis- 
tinguishable atoms, with the mass of men, teach them 
that they possess a distinct character, which it is God's 
will to educate ; distinct gifts which God the Spirit will 
inspire and develoj^; a peculiar work for which each 
man is elected, and in performing which his personality 
will become more and more defined. 

Now, the spirit of the world, when it is conventional, — 
and when is it not? — is in exact opposition to this. Its 
tendency is to reduce all men and women to one pat- 
tern, to level the landscape of humanity to a dead plain, 
to clip all the trees which are growing freely, " of their 
own divine vitality," into pollards, to wear all individu- 
ality down into uniformity. There must be nothing 
original, — in the world's language, eccentric, erratic; 
men must desire nothing strongly, think nothing which 
the generality do not think, have no strongly outlined 
character. The influence of society must be collective, 
it must reject as a portion of it the influence of any 
marked individuality. Custom is to be lord and king, — 
nay, despot. We must all dress in the same way, read 



DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 191 



the same books, talk of the same things; and, when we 
change, change altogether, like Wordsworth's cloud, 
"which moveth altogether, if it move at all." We do 
not object to progress, but we do object to eccentricity. 
Society must not be affronted by originality. It is a 
rudeness. It suggests that society might be better, that 
there may be an imperfection here or there. Level 
everybody, and then let us all collectively advance ; but 
no one must leave the ranks or step to the front. 

This is the spirit which either cannot see, or, seeing, 
hates men of genius. They are in conflict with the 
known and accredited modes of action. They do not 
paint pictures in the manner of the ancients, nor judge 
political events in accordance with public opinion, nor 
write poems which the customary intellect can under- 
stand, nor lead a political party according to j^recedent. 
They are said to shock the world. As if that was not 
the very best thing which could happen to the world ! 
So it comes to pass that they are depreciated and neg- 
lected, or, if they are too great and persist, jjersecuted 
and killed. And, indeed, it is not difficult to get rid of 
them ; for you have only to increase the weight of the 
spirit of custom and bring it to bear upon them, and 
that will settle the question, for men of genius cannot 
breathe in this atmosphere, it kills them: the air must 
be natural in which they live, and the society must be 
free. The pitiable thing in English society now is, not 
only the difficulty of an original man existing in it, but 
that society is in danger of becoming of so dreadful a 
uniformity that no original man can be developed in it 
at all. This, if anything, will become the ruin of Eng- 
land's greatness. 



192 



FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 



There is, it is true, a kind of reaction going on at 
present against this tyranny of society. Young men 
and women, weary of monotonous pleasures, are in re- 
bellion ; but the whole social condition has been so de- 
graded that they rush into still more artificial and 
unnatural pleasures and excitements. In endeavoring to 
become free, they enslave themselves the more. 

Those who might do much do little. It is one of the 
advantages of wealth and high position that those who 
possess them may initiate the uncustomary without a cry 
being raised against them. But, even with every oppor- 
tunity, how little imagination do they ever display, how 
little invention, how little they do to relieve the melan- 
choly uniformity of our j^leasures, or the intense joyless- 
ness of our work ! 

Now, this was precisely the spirit of the Jewish relig- 
ious world at the time of Christ. Men were bound down 
to a multitude of fixed rules and maxims, they were 
hedged in on all sides. It was all arranged how they 
were to live and die, to repent and make atonement, to 
fast and pray, to believe and to worship, to dress and 
move. It was the most finished conventionalism of relig- 
ion, in spite of the different sects, which the world has 
ever seen. 

Then came Christ, entirely original, proclaiming new 
ideas, or, at least, old truths in a new form, making 
thoughts universal which had been particular, over- 
throwing worn-out ceremonies, satirizing and denouncing 
things gray with the dust of ages, letting in the light of 
truth into the chambers where the priests and lawyers 
spun their webs of theology to ensnare the free souls of 
men, trampling down relentlessly the darling customs of 



DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 193 



the old conservatism, shocking and bewildering the relig- 
ious society. And they were dismayed and horrified. 

He did not keep, they said, the Sabbath day. He ate 
and drank — abominable iniquity ! — with publicans and 
sinners. He allowed a fallen woman to touch him. 
Worse still, he did not wash his hands before he ate 
bread. He did not teach as the scribes did. He did not 
live the time-honored and ascetic life of a prophet. He 
dared to speak against the priesthood and the aristoc- 
racy. He associated with fishermen. He came from Naz- 
areth. That was enough : no good could come from Naza- 
reth. He was a carpenter's son, and illiterate ; and no 
prophet was made, or could be made, out of such mate- 
rials. And this man ! he dares to disturb us, to contest 
our maxims, to set at naught our customs, to array him- 
self against our desj)otism. " Come, let us kill him." 
And so they crucified him. The conventional spirit of 
society in Jerusalem, that was one of the murderers of 
Christ. They did not see, the wretched men, that in 
murdering him they murdered their nation also. 

So far for this conventional spirit as that which hinders 
the development or obstructs the work of genius, and as 
that which, in strict analogy with its work to-day, killed 
the Prince of Life long ago in Jerusalem. Let me take 
the question now out of the realm of thought and his- 
tory, and apply it practically. 

Ask yourselves two questions : First, what would be 
the fate of Christ if he were suddenly to appear as a 
teacher in the middle of London, as he did of old in the 
middle of Jerusalem? How would our orthodox relig- 
ious society and our conventional social world receive 
him? Desiring to speak with all reverence, he would 



194 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



horrify the one by his heterodox opinions, as they would 
be called; the other by his absolute carelessness and 
scorn of many of the very palladia of society. Suppos- 
ing he were to denounce — as he would in no measured 
terms — our system of caste; attack, as he did of old in 
Judea, our most cherished maxims about property and 
rights ; live in opposition to certain social rules, receiv- 
ing sinners and dining with outcasts; tear away the 
flimsy veil of words whereby we excuse our extrava- 
gance, our vanity, our pushing for position; contemn 
with scorn our accredited hyjiocrisies, which we think 
allowable, because they make the surface of society 
smooth ; live among us his free, bold, unconventional, 
outspoken life, — how should we receive him? It is a 
question which it is worth while that society should ask 
itself. 

I trust more would hail his advent than we think. 
I believe the time is come when men are sick of false- 
hood, sick of the tyranny of custom, sick of living in 
unreality ; that they are longing for escape, longing for 
a new life and a new order of things, longing for some 
fresh ideas to come and stir, like the angel, the stagnant 
pool. What is the meaning of the vague hoj)es every- 
where expressed about the new Parliament ? It really 
means that England is anxious for a more ideal, a more 
true and serious life, a reformed society. 

Again, to connect this first question with the religious 
world : suppose Christ were to come now and proclaim 
in Scotland that the Sabbath was made for man, or to 
preach the Sermon on the Mount as the full revelation 
of God to men accustomed to hear the gospel scheme 
discussed each Sunday. In the first case he would be 



DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 195 



persecuted as an infidel, and in the second as a heretic. 
Supposing he were now to speak against sacerdotal -pre- 
tension or the worship of the letter of the Bible, against 
a religion which sought to gain life from minute observ- 
ances, or against a Sadducean denial of all that is spirit- 
ual (a tendency of the religious liberals of to-day), as 
strongly and as sharply as he spoke at Jerusalem, — how 
would he escape? The religious world could not crucify 
him, but they would open on him the tongue of perse- 
cution. 

I believe there are thousands who would join them- 
selves to him, thousands more than recognized him in 
Judea, — for the world has advanced indeed since then, — 
thousands of true men from among all religious bodies, 
and thousands from among those who are now plenti- 
fully sprinkled with the epithets of rationalists, infidels, 
heretics, and atheists ; but there are thousands who call 
themselves by his name who would turn from him in 
dismay or in dislike, who would neglect or persecute 
him, for he would come among our old conservatisms of 
religion, among our doctrinal systems and close creeds, 
superstitions, false liberalisms, j)riesthoods, and ritual- 
isms, as he came of old among them all in Jerusalem, like 
lightning, to consume and wither everything false, retro- 
grade, conventional, restricted, uncharitable, and super- 
stitious; to kindle into life all that is living, loving, akin 
to light, and full of truth within our religious world. If 
we could accept the revolution he would make, our 
national religion would be saved : if not, it would be 
enervated by the blow, and die. 

Brethren, we ought, realizing these things as members 
of society or members of any religious body, — realizing, 



196 



FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 



I say, Christ speaking to us as lie would speak now, — to 
feel our falseness, and, in the horror of it, to act like 
men who have discovered a traitor in their camp, whom 
they must destroy or themselves j)erish. We may save 
our nation if we resolve, each one here for himself, to 
free ourselves from cant and formalism and superstition, 
to steji into the clear air of freedom, individuality, and 
truth, to live in crystal uprightness of life and holiness 
of heart. 

And, lastly, ask yourselves this second question, how 
far the spirit of the world, as devotion to convention- 
ality, to accredited opinion, is preventing you personally 
from receiving Christ. 

Is your sole aim the endeavor to please your party, 
running after it into that which you feel as evil, as well 
as that which you feel as good; forfeiting your Christian 
individuality as a son of God, that you may follow in the 
wake of the public opinion of your party? Is that your 
view of manly duty ? Then you cannot receive Christ, 
for he demands that you should be true to your own 
soul. 

Are you permitting yourself to chime in with the low 
morality of the day, to accept the common standard held 
by the generality, repudiating, as if it were a kind of 
Christian charity to do so, the desire to be better than 
your neighbors, and so coming at last to join in the light 
laugh with which the world treats social immoralities, 
reckless extravagance, the dishonesty of trade or the 
dishonesty of the exchange, or the more flagrant shame, 
dishonesty, and folly which adorn the turf, — letting 
evils take their course because society does not protest 
as yet, till gradually the evils appear to you at first en- 



DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 197 

durable, and then even beautiful, being protected by the 
deities of Custom and Fashion, which we enthrone in- 
stead of God? Are you drifting into such a state of 
heart ? If so, you cannot expect to be able to receive 
Christ, for he demands that life should be ideal : not 
only moral, but godlike ; not the prudence of silence 
about evil, but the imprudence of bold separation from 
evil. 

And, leaving much behind, to come home to the inner 
spiritual life, is your religion only the creature of custom, 
not of conviction, only conventional, not individual? 
Have you received and adopted current opinions because 
they are current, without inquiry, without interest, with- 
out any effort of the soul, — orthodox because it is the 
fashion to be orthodox, or heterodox because it is the 
fashion to be heterodox ? How can you receive Christ, 
— for where he comes he claims reality, the living 
energy of interest, the passion of the soul for light and 
progress? Ye must be born again, born out of a dead, 
Pharisaic, conventional form of religion into a living 
individual union with the life of God. Some may tell 
you not to inquire, lest you should doubt ; not to think, 
but to accept blindly the doctrines of the Church, lest 
you should end in scepticism. Counsels of cowardice 
and faithlessness, productive of that false sleep of the 
soul which is ten times worse than scepticism, which 
takes from man the activity of thinking, of doubting, of 
concluding, which destroys the boundless joy of relig- 
ious personality, the pleasure of consciously willing, of 
full conviction, to be a follower of Christ, a man at one 
with God. Our faith, when it is accepted only on the 
word of others, is untried and weak. It has the strength 



198 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



of a castle which has never been attacked, of a chain 
which never has been proved. It may resist the trial, 
but we are not sure about it. ^Ve are afraid of search, 
afraid of new opinions, afraid of thought, lest possibly 
we lose our form of faith. Every infidel objection makes 
us tremble, every new discovery in science is a terror. 
Take away the old form, and we are lost : we cry out that 
God is dead and Christ is overthrown. 

In reality, we have no faith, no religion, no God. We 
have only a superstition, a set of opinions, and, instead 
of a living God, a fetish. 

The true religious life comes of a clear realization of 
our distinct personal relation to God. The views of 
society, the accredited oj)inions of the Church on relig- 
ion, the true man does not despise : he seeks to under- 
stand them, for perhaps they may assist him in his 
endeavors; but he does not follow them blindly: he puts 
them even aside altogether, that he may go straight to 
God, and find God for himself, and as a person know that 
God is his, and that he is God's. His faith is secure, 
because he has won it by conquest of objections, because 
he has reached it through the overthrow of doubt, 
because he has proved it in trial and found it strong. 
He has come at truth by personal thought, reflection, by 
personal struggle against falsehood, through the passion 
and effort of his soul. His love of Christ is not a mere 
religious phrase : it is a reality. He has applied the 
principles of the Redeemer's life and words to his own 
life, to the movements of the world, as tests and direc- 
tion in the hours of trial, when duties clash or when 
decision is demanded; and he has found them answer 
to the call. He has studied the Saviour's character and 



DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 199 



meditated on his life ; and of conviction he has chosen 
him as the highest object of his worship, as the ideal to 
which he aspires. 

Prayer is no form of words to him : he has known and 
proved its power to bring his soul into blest communion 
with the Highest. He does not hesitate to speak the 
truth, for he feels that he is inspired of God. 

Such a man's religion is not conventional, has no fear, 
is not superstitious : it is individual, it is his, inwoven 
with his life, part of his being ; nay, it is his being. He 
is consciously at one with God. He has freely, with all 
the faculties of his humanity, received Christ Jesus. 

Two things, then, are laid before you this day: con- 
ventional religion, a whited sepulchre ; personal religion, 
a fair temple whose sure foundations are bound together 
by the twisted strength of the innermost fibres of the 
soul, — a religion of words accepted from others, which 
begins in self-deception and ends in blindness, supersti- 
tion, and the terror of the soul, or a religion at one 
with life, begun in resolution, continued in personal 
action toward Christ, the Ideal of the soul, and ending 
in the conscious rest of union with God. 

Choose ; and may God grant us all grace to choose 
that which makes us men, not the puppets of opinion, — 
that life which frees us from the slavery of following the 
multitude, and makes us sons of God through Jesus 
Christ our Lord. 



THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 



1868. 



" And when the people were gathered thick together, he hegan to 
say, This is an evil generation : they seek a sign ; and there shall no 
sign he given it but the sign of Jonas the prophet." — Luke xi., 29. 

From the ancient days of the people of Israel, when 
Moses, knowing the character of his nation, asked of God 
that he would vouchsafe to him a sensible sign to show 
as proof of his mission, until the time of Christ, we find 
among the Jews the craving for signs and wonders. 

They desired material proofs for spiritual things, they 
demanded that every revelation should be accredited by 
miracles. It was through the gate of the senses and 
under the guidance of wonder, not through the gate of 
the spirit and under the guidance of faith, that they 
entered the temple of Religion. 

Now, this was absolutely a childish position. The 
child is the scholar of the senses, but it is a disgrace to a 
man to be their slave. The child may believe that the 
moon is self-luminous, — it is through believing the error 
that he finds out its erroneousness, — but it is ridiculous 
in the grown-up man who has examined the question not 
to say, " My senses are wrong." 

It is spiritual childishness which believes that a doc- 



THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 



201 



trine or a man's life are true because of a miracle. The 
miracle speaks for the most part to the senses, and the 
senses can tell us nothing of the spiritual world. 

It is spiritual manhood which out of a heart educated 
by the experience arising from the slow rejection of 
error can say of any spiritual truth, "It is so, it must be 
so. I have the witness of it within ; and, though a thou- 
sand miracles were to suggest the denial of it, I should 
cling to it unswervingly." 

Now, the position of mind exactly opposite to this was 
that held by a large number of the common Jews, and 
apparently by the greater part of the chief men. The 
latter demanded signs of Christ as proof of the truth of 
his teaching : the former displayed an absolutely sensual 
craving for miracles. And yet on neither of these 
classes did the miracles, per se, produce any lasting 
effect. The Pharisees confessed, we are told, the reality 
of the miracle of the raising of Lazarus, and then imme- 
diately met to take measures to put Christ to death. 
The common people were so little impressed with one 
miracle that they immediately demanded another, as if 
the first had had no meaning. 

This is the j^lain spirit of Fetishism, or the worship of 
sensible wonders without any knowledge why the wor- 
ship is given, without any attempt to discover why the 
wonder has occurred. 

It was the temptation to yield to this passion of his 
time and to employ his miraculous power for the sake of 
winning the favor of the multitude, or for ostentation, or 
for the sake of establishing his kingdom rapidly, which 
Christ conquered in the trial called that of the pinnacle 
of the temple. In that temptation was gathered up the 



202 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



whole meaning of this part of the spirit of the age ; and, 
in conquering it at the outset of his career, he conquered 
it for his whole life. Again and again it met him, but it 
met him in vain. Even at the last, the voice of this 
phase of the spirit of the world mocked him upon the 
cross. " If he be the King of Israel, let him now come 
down from the cross, and we will believe him." They 
fancied, even then, that an outward sign could secure 
their faith: as if those men could believe, who were blind 
to the wonder of love, obedience, and martyrdom for 
truth, which, greater than any miracle, was exhibited 
before their eyes on Calvary. 

His greatest utterances, where all was great, were 
spoken in the spirit contrary to this religion of the 
senses. He threw men back upon the witness of their 
own heart, — " They that are of the truth hear my 
voice." He declared that his true followers know him 
by intuition, — " My sheep know my voice, and they 
follow me." He made eternal life consist, not in the 
blind faith which came and went with the increase and 
cessation of miracle, but in the faith which recognized 
him as the Son of God; in the spiritual union which 
he expressed in the words, " He that eateth my flesh 
and drinketh my blood dwelleth in me, and I in him." 
God, in his view, was not the wonder-worker of the Old 
Testament, but a Spirit who demanded a spiritual wor- 
ship arising out of a deep conviction of his necessity to 
the soul. " God is a spirit, and they that worship him 
must worship him in spirit and in truth." He swept 
away with fiery and j)regnant words all the jugglery of 
superstitious ceremonial with which men had overloaded 
the simple idea of God; and he called them back to 



THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 



203 



natural life and feeling, to childlike trust in a Father 
ever near to them, to a simple and pure morality. But, 
at the same time, he presented to their effort a grand 
ideal, which, though it seemed too high for human 
nature, has yet stirred and exalted men as no other 
ideal has ever done, — "Be ye therefore perfect, even as 
your Father in heaven was perfect." 

It was all too high, too simple, too spiritual, to please 
the Jewish taste. It is true he condescended in a cer- 
tain degree to their weakness of faith; and he did many 
mighty works, partly because he felt that some men 
must be first attracted through the senses, and partly, 
as in the case of Xathanael, in order to confirm a waver- 
ing faith. But, on the other hand, he always refused to 
do any miracle without an adequate motive. Where the 
miracle could establish no principle, where it was not 
preceded by faith, or where it did not teach a universal 
lesson, Christ would not pander to the Jewish craving 
for a sign. This was his stern answer, "An evil and 
adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. There shall 
no sign be given it," etc. 

Stung with his righteous scorn of their passion for the 
visible, they slew him, and signed in his death the war- 
rant of their nation's ruin. 

Now, I have been endeavoring to show that the spirit 
of the world in its several developments, which killed 
Christ, is identical with the spirit which in every nation 
has neglected, enfeebled, and persecuted all individu- 
ality, originality, or genius, not only in religion, but in 
philosophy, poetry, art, and science. We have seen this 
in the case of the worship of the conventional and of 
the worship of gain, ostentation, and comfort. We have 



204 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



seen how these phases of the spirit of the world have 
corrupted, ruined, and killed the life of men who rose 
abov, the common standard. I do not say that this 
result is due altogether to the spirit of the world : much 
is due to the weakness of the men themselves ; but we 
who are not gifted men have no idea of the subtlety 
and awful force of the temptations of the world to men 
of genius ; we, who have not the strength nor the weak- 
ness of genius, can scarcely conceive how cruel and 
how debasing the influence of the world may be, when 
it masters that strength or flatters that weakness into 
folly. 

The phase of the spirit of the world of which we 
speak to-day is that of devotion to signs and wonders. 

Men of genius are themselves signs and wonders in 
the world. How does the world treat them? It does 
not help them, it does not bring out what is best in 
them: it makes a show of them, and then dismisses 
them with a sigh of weariness. They are taken up and 
flattered till all their strength is drained away. They 
are polished down till all the angles which made them 
of use, which jarred upon the splendid dulness or irri- 
tated into some life the lazy indifference of common 
society, are smoothed away; and the man offends no 
more by originality. It fills one with pity and anger 
to think how many, who might have been Samsons and 
have smitten our modern Philistinism to its death, have 
been ensnared by the Delilah of fashionable society, 
and set, " shorn of their puissant locks," to work in the 
prison and to make sport for the Philistines. We mourn, 
and with just cause, the loss of many who, born to be 
kings, have sunk into willing slaves. 



THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 



205 



Look at the way in which this devotion to signs and 
wonders in the world acts now upon the literature of the 
country. In that sphere, it is represented by a craving 
for " sensationalism," which results in intellectual sloth. 
Men ask for books which excite, but give no trouble. 
They have not time, they say, to read slowly, much less 
to read a book twice over. A book genuinely thought 
out, but not brilliant, in which the experience of a life of 
intellectual work is concentrated, has scarcely a chance 
of success. The public are too indolent to read even a 
thoughtful review of such a book, unless it be written in 
sparkling style and flavored with a spice of sensation. 
Except they read signs and wonders, they will not read 
at all. What are the consequences? Men of thought, 
Avho are strong of will and believe in themselves, refuse 
to submit to this tyrannical cry for signs. They persist 
in writing books of worth and weight; but they do it 
in a kind of despair, and their work suffers from the 
dogged dulness which despair creates. TJnlistened to 
and hopeless, they cannot write with the joy which en- 
livens expression, with the uplifting sense of a public 
sympathy. 

Men of thought, who are weak of will, and whose 
self-confidence depends uj3on the public voice, write one 
book of power, and then surrender their high mission. 
They enter on the career which demoralizes the finer 
powers of genius, — the career of the reviewer and the 
magazine contributor, — and too often end by drifting 
into the mere sensationalist, writing a book which, like 
an annual, grows, blooms, and dies in a season. They 
strain after brilliancy, — not brilliancy for its own sake, 
but brilliancy for the sake of show or favor. They fall 



206 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



into the very temptation which Christ resisted in the 
case of miracles. 

I might illustrate the subject in other spheres than 
the sphere of literature; but enough has been said to 
show the operation upon men of genius of this element 
of the spirit of the world, which as a craving for signs 
and wonders among the Jews hurried the Saviour to the 
cross. 

Now, a society tainted with the diseased passion for 
this class of writing is drifting away from that temper 
of mind which can frankly accept Christ Jesus ; for his 
is not the life which can satisfy the sensationalist. 

Separate it from the moral glory, the spiritual beauty, 
which rose from it like a sea of light out of inner foun- 
tains, and it is a common life enough. Uneventful for 
thirty years, the story of it, even in the midst of its 
miracles, is marked by nothing especially exciting. It 
was in itself eminently natural, unartificial, deep, cool, 
and quiet as a garden well, passed by preference among 
rustic, uneducated men, amid the holy serenity of the 
mountain and the desert, among the gracious simplici- 
ties of natural beauty, beside the ripple of the lake, upon 
the grass-grown hill, — seeking even at Jerusalem refuge 
from the noise and passion of the city in the peaceful 
village of Bethany or among the shadows of the silent 
Garden of Gethsemane. 

We cannot understand it, we cannot understand him, 
we cannot enter into the profound simplicity and truth 
of his teaching, if we have habituated our mind to 
morbid excitement, our moral sense to a continual vio- 
lation of it in both French and English novels, and our 
emotions to a mental hysteria which destroys the will. 



THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 



207 



This may seem a slight evil ; but it is more than we 
imagine. We should look with fear upon the growth 
of this temper in English society: it is denaturalizing 
it. It renders both mind and heart corrupt. It will 
end by making the life corrupt and society impure. Sen- 
sationalism in literature is closely connected with sensu- 
ality in society. 

Again, take in the present time, as another form of 
the Jewish passion for signs and wonders, the existence 
among us of men and women with a passion for the false 
supernatural. The true supernatural is not the miracu- 
lous, but the purely spiritual; not the manifestation of 
things which astonish the senses, but the revelation of 
things which ennoble the spirit. In neither of these 
ways are the things with which we have been lately 
favored truly supernatural. They are abundantly ma- 
terial, and they do not ennoble. The last appearance of 
the chief prophet has not been characterized by a surplus 
of spirituality. 

Every day, however, fewer persons are likely to be 
swept away by this spiritual quackery ; for, as the ozone 
of scientific knowledge is added to our social atmosphere, 
these corrupt growths dwindle and die. But it is worth 
while perhaps to say that they enfeeble the intellect and 
do harm to Christianity. No man can long float in the 
misty region of pale speculation in which these exhibi- 
tions involve him, — speculation which starts from no 
fixed point and aims at nothing, — nor be tossed about 
by the inconsequence of the so-called phenomena, with- 
out feeling his intellect ebbing away and its manliness 
departing. They render the reason a useless part of our 
being. 



208 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



So doing, they do evil to Christianity ; for to conceive 
Christianity grandly, to expound it nobly, to develop it 
within our own souls as fully as possible, and to work 
for its perfect kingdom, we need to unite to its spiritual 
power within us " the power of a free, vigorous, manly, 
and well-cultured intellect." We need for the work of 
Christ, not only spiritual life as the first thing, but in- 
tellectual light as the second. 

Again, one of the greatest evils which arise from 
the encouragement of charlatanry of this kind in con- 
nection with religion — and it is so connected — - is that 
it protracts the period when the work of science and 
religion, by consent of their several professors, will ad- 
vance together. It causes scientific men to think that 
everything connected with religion is inimical to the 
methods of science : it intensifies their opposition to the 
thought of the supernatural by setting before them a 
false supernaturalism. It throws contempt upon and 
degrades the notion of a spiritual world. It increases a 
credulity on the one hand which leads to gross supersti- 
tion, it increases an unbelief on the other which leads to 
gross materialism. The extremes of the two sides are 
set into stronger opposition ; and, in the noise which the 
extreme parties make, the voices of wiser men remain 
unheard. 

One element of good hope, however, attends its ap- 
pearance among us. The spirit in society which it feeds 
has almost always, in conjunction with a spirit of unbe- 
lief with which it is connected, preceded a revolution of 
thought. It was so before the teaching of Christianity. 
It was so before the rise of the Reformation. It was so 
before the outburst of new ideas which gave force to the 
early days of the French Revolution. 



THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 



209 



I have hope that this blind confusion, this tossing 
together of the elements of credulity and unbelief, will 
create, in a reaction from them, a rational and liberal 
faith. 

Analogous to this is the endeavor to awake and excite 
religious sensibility either by the overwrought fervor of 
the revivalist, producing an hysterical excitement which 
is mistaken for a spiritual manifestation, or by the sen- 
sual impressions made by the lights, incense, music, 
color, and all the paraphernalia of the ritualists. I do 
not deny the real enthusiasm, however cruelly mistaken 
in its mode of action, nor the good which many of the 
revivalists have done ; nor the good and the enthusiasm 
which follow the efforts of the ritualist, but in a certain 
degree they both agree in this, — they try to produce 
spirituality from without. They make use of stimulants 
which are unnatural in relation to the spirit, though 
natural in their relation to the body. 

Precisely the same thing is done by those who hunt 
after exciting sermons, who imagine they repair the 
ravages of the devotion of six days to the world by an 
emotional impression on Sunday as transient as the 
morning dew ; who mistake a thrill of intellectual excite- 
ment for a spiritual conviction, a glow of aspiration for 
a religious act, and pleasure in a sermon for the will to 
conquer evil. 

Now, all these things are, under one form or another, 
the products of the same spirit which in the days of 
Christ sought for signs and wonders. 

The melancholy superstition which is called so iron- 
ically spiritualism unfits its devoted votaries for their 
daily work. Some play with it, and it does them little 



210 



FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 



harm ; but others, embarking in it with energy, get into 
an excited, inoperative, unhealthy condition, in which a 
quiet Christian life becomes all but impossible, in which 
duty becomes a burden if it separate them from their 
experiments, in which it seems better to sit at a table 
slothfully waiting for a spiritual communication than to 
go with Christ into the middle of the arena of life, and 
do our duty there against the evil. It is there, in faith- 
ful following of him, that we shall have spiritual com- 
munications ; it is there, in self-sacrificing action, that 
we shall feel inspired by God to act and speak; it is 
there that we shall realize our communication with the 
host of all great sjnrits, in enduring like them all things 
for the truth ; it is there, by faithful prayer and resist- 
ance to temptation, by the warfare against sin within 
and wrong without, that our hearts will begin to beat 
with the excitement which ennobles and the enthusiasm 
which does not decay; it is there, loving our Saviour's 
spirit above all things and aspiring to reach his divine 
perfection, that we shall enter into the true spiritual 
world, and feel, not the miserable presences of beings 
which, on the imj^ossible supposition of their existence, 
it is a disgrace to associate with, but the very presence 
of the Spirit of God within us; hear, not a futile and 
laborious noise, but the voice of God himself, saying to 
us, after the conquest of sin or the performance of duty 
in his strength, " Well done, good and faithful servant." 

And as to the attempts of revivalists or ritualists to 
influence the spirit through the flesh, there is this plain 
evil : that all stimulants of this character produce each 
their own peculiar reaction, and are followed in the 
reaction by exhaustion. Then the passionate emotion 



THE EELIGION OF SIGNS. 



211 



must be worked up again by another and a fiercer ad- 
dress, or the aesthetic impression which produced the 
thrill must be again received, but this time by means 
of a more exciting service. It follows, then, that the 
exhaustion of reaction is greater, since the stimulant has 
been more violent. So it proceeds, till at last the limit 
of stimulation has been reached and the excitement can 
be aroused no more. Only the exhaustion remains, the 
craving is still there ; and the worn-out votaries of the 
religion of the nerves and the senses turn back, unable 
to do without their thrilling sensations, to the old excite- 
ments, and go back in the case of revivalism to sin, in 
the case of ritualism to the world. 

Of course, we only speak of tendencies, not of persons. 
It would be absurd to deny that many faithful men 
have been made by revivalism. It would be far more 
absurd to deny that there are thousands of devoted men 
who attach a living meaning to ritualistic observances, 
and to whom these things are not a form without a 
spirit, but the natural expression, and therefore to them 
the right expression, of spiritual feelings, who use them 
not to create from without, but to embody from within, 
their inner life with God. 

But, making this allowance, it seems clear that this 
form of religious life is not the highest nor the truest 
form of the Christian life. It encourages that temper 
of mind which demands signs and wonders as proofs and 
supports of faith. It is in bondage to ceremonies : it is 
against our full freedom in Christ Jesus. It says to men, 
in principle, "Except ye be circumcised, Christ shall 
profit you nothing." It denies the equal holiness of all 
times, of all places, to the Christian heart, by asserting 



212 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the especial holiness of certain times and certain places. 
It places the priest between us and God as a necessary 
means, whereby alone we may hold communication with 
God. It asserts the absolute necessity of certain sym- 
bolic observances for the reception of any higher spirit- 
ual grace from God. 

This is not the purity and simplicity of Christianity. 
It is a rehabilitation of those elements in Judaism which 
Christ attacked and overthrew. It is opposed to the 
whole spirit of his teaching. He removed the barriers 
of ceremonies, of sacrifices, of authority, of localized and 
exclusive sanctities ; and he brought the heart of each 
man into direct communion with the Heavenly Father. 
As to a priesthood, and its pretensions to interfere be- 
tween us and God, Christ swept it away with every 
word and action of his life, and by uniting the individual 
soul to God made every man his own priest, and the 
daily spiritual offering of each man's love in feeling and 
in action the acceptable sacrifice. "If any man love me, 
he will keep my words ; and my Father will love him, 
and we will come to him, and make our abode with 
him." 

There is the charter of our freedom; and there is not 
a word in it of the necessity of God's grace coming to us 
filtered through the medium of a priest, or a ceremony, 
or a sacrament, or a symbol. 

Blessed is he, in these times of devotion to the sensi- 
ble, who can behold the obedience and the deep self- 
sacrifice of the Saviour's life and death; who can watch, 
unfolding in him, perfect love, undaunted courage, stain- 
less purity, the simple nobleness of truth, the union of 
mercy and justice, and, recognizing that as God in 



THE RELIGION OE SIGNS. 



213 



humanity, throw himself upon it in a pure passion of 
love, and with a solemn force of faith, and clasp the per- 
fect man to his heart as his unique possession, as his 
living impulse, as his Redeemer, in whose love his sin 
is drowned, his lower self annihilated. 

Signs, wonders, excitements, observances, I need them 
not to make me trust in thee. I feel thy power in my 
heart, thy presence moving in my life. I hear thy 
voice : it is enough, my spirit knows its sound, claims it 
as the voice of the rightful Master of my being. I have 
not seen ; but, O my Saviour ! I have felt, and I believe. 



THE iNATTJBALNESS OF GOD'S 
JUDGMENTS. 
1867. 

" And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these 
Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered 
such things ? I tell you, Nay : but, except ye repent, ye shall all like- 
wise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, 
and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that 
dwelt in Jerusalem ? " — Luke xiii., 2-4. 

Last year, during the prevalence of the cholera, we 
spoke of it from this place, and of the lessons which it 
taught us. We then laid down the principle that all 
the so-called judgments of God were the natural results 
of violation of laws, and as such always unarhitrary. 

The principle is a common one, but it requires to be 
stated and restated continually, and especially so from 
the pulpit. First, because it is explicitly or implicitly 
denied by a large number of religious persons, to the 
great detriment, I believe, of religion ; and, secondly, 
because, in establishing it firmly, we get rid of nearly all 
that sets scientific men in opposition to religious men. 

Now, the principle that every judgment of God is con- 
nected, in the way of ordinary cause and effect, with the 
sin or error therein condemned, destroys at once the 
notion that plague or famine are judgments upon us for 



NATURALNESS OF GOD's JUDGMENTS. 215 



infidelity or rationalism or sabbath-breaking, or our 
private sins ; for there is plainly no natural connection 
between the alleged sin and the alleged punishment. 
For example, the town which takes due sanitary j)recau- 
tions may refuse to give one penny to missions, but it 
will not be visited by a virulent outbreak of cholera. 
The town which takes no sanitary precautions, but gives 
£10,000 a year to missions, will, in spite of its Chris- 
tian generosity, become a victim to the epidemic. The 
lightning will strike the ship of the good man who 
chooses to sail without a lightning-conductor, it will 
spare the ship of the atheist and the blasj^hemer who 
provides himself with the protecting-rod. The cattle 
plague will not touch the cattle of the most active 
Roman Catholic in England, if his quarantine is exclu- 
sive enough ; while it will destroy all the cows of the 
best Protestant in the country, if he be careless of their 
isolation. We may sin as much as we please in our own 
persons, but we shall escape cholera as much as we shall 
escape famine, if we discover the source of contagion and 
guard against it. 

There is, then, always a natural connection between 
the sin and the punishment ; and the punishment points 
out its own cause. To follow the guiding of its finger 
is to discover the evil, and, when discovered, to rectify 
it. But we assume a supernatural cause, and the evil 
remains hidden from us. There is no hope of success 
till we act upon the principle which is here laid down. 

It is my intention this morning to show the truth of 
this principle in other sjmeres than that of epidemic 
disease. If we can manifest its universality, we go far 
to prove its truth. Take as the first illustration the 
case of the Moral Law. 



216 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



The Ten Commandments appear at first sight to be 
arbitrary rules of conduct. Why should we not kill a 
man when he has injured us? Why should we not steal 
when we are in want ? Many a savage community has 
argued in this way, and we do not want for isolated in- 
stances of the same feeling in civilized societies. But, 
as civilization increased, the commands of the Decalogue 
were felt to be right, not only because they were re- 
echoed by an inward voice, but also because they were 
proved to be necessary for the progress of humanity. 
They were commanded, then, not only because of their 
agreement to eternal right, but also because of their ne- 
cessity. Some of them were in very early times clearly 
seen as needful, — the sacredness of an oath, the sacred- 
ness of human life, the sacredness of property. On the 
other hand, it has taken centuries to show that poly- 
theism is a destructive element to national greatness. 
Others were not so clearly seen to be just. " Thou shalt 
not covet " seemed to make a great deal out of nothing ; 
but experience taught men, though slowly, that inor- 
dinate desire for the goods of another was the most 
fruitful source of violation of social rights. Again, to 
reconcile the fourth commandment with a natural feel- 
ing of right has been a puzzle to many. But men saw, 
as the labor of the world increased, the naturalness of a 
day of rest and its necessity for human nature. It was 
seen to be commanded, not of caprice on the part of 
God, but because it was needful for humanity. The 
commandments have force, therefore, not because they 
are commanded by a God of power, but because they are 
either needful for, or natural to, human nature. 

Nor is the judgment which follows on their violation 



NATURALNESS OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 217 

any more arbitrary than the laws themselves. As they 
have their root in our nature, so they have their pun- 
ishment in our nature. Violate a moral law, and our 
constitution protests through our conscience. Sorrow 
awakes, remorse follows ; and remorse is felt in itself to 
be the mark of separation from God. The punishment 
is not arbitrary, but natural. Moreover, each particular 
violation of the moral law has its own proper judgment. 
The man who is dishonest in one branch of his life soon 
feels dishonesty — not impurity, not anything else but 
dishonesty — creep through his whole life and enter into 
all his actions. Impurity has its own punishment, and 
that is increasing corruption of heart. Each sin has its 
own judgment, and not another's ; and the judgment is 
so naturally linked to the sin that it j)oints out unmis- 
takably what the particular sin is which is punished. 
The moral pain calls attention to the moral disease. It 
is the voice of God saying : " There, in that thing you 
are wrong, my child. Do not do it again, do the very 
opposite." 

Take, again, the intellectual j:>art of man. The neces- 
sities for intellectual progress are attention, persever- 
ance, practice. Refuse to submit to these laws, and you 
are punished by loss of memory or inactivity of memory, 
by failure in your work or by inability to think and act 
quickly at the proper moment. The intellectual punish- 
ments follow as naturally upon violation of the laws of 
the intellect as sickness does on violation of the laws of 
health, and they point out as clearly their causes as 
trembling nerves point out their cause in the indulgence 
of the drunkard. 

Again, take what may be called national laws. These 



218 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



have been, as it were, codified by the Jewish prophets. 
They were men whose holiness brought them near to 
God, and gave them insight into the diseases of nations. 
They saw clearly the natural result of these diseases, and 
they proclaimed it to the world. They looked on Sama- 
ria, and saw there a corrupt aristocracy, failing patriot- 
ism, oppression of the poor, falsification of justice, and 
they said, God will judge this city, and it shall be over- 
thrown by Assyria. Well, was that an arbitrary judg- 
ment ? It was of God ; but given a powerful neighbor, 
and a divided people in which the real fighting and 
working class has been crushed, enslaved, and unjustly 
treated, and an enervated, lazy, pleasure-consumed up- 
per class, and what is the natural result ? Why, that 
very thing which the prophets called God's judgment. 
God's judgment was the natural result of the violation 
of the first of national laws, — even-handed justice to all 
j)arties in the State. The same principle is true in a 
thousand instances in history: the national judgments 
of war, revolution, pestilence, famine, are the direct re- 
sults of the violation by nations of certain plain laws 
which have become clear by exjDerience. Unfortunately, 
men took them to mean a supernatural expression of 
God's anger, instead of looking for their natural causes. 
It is this notion of God not being a God of order, but a 
God who interferes capriciously with the course of soci- 
ety, which has made the advance of the world so slow, 
and made so many of his judgments useless. For these 
judgments come to teach nations what is wrong in 
them ; and the judgments must come again and again, 
while the wrong thing is there. It is slow work teach- 
ing blind men ; but God does not spare trouble, and the 



NATURALNESS OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 219 



laws of the universe cannot be bought off by prayer. 
There is but one way of making them kind, and that is 
by getting on their side. We find them out by punish- 
ment, as a child finds out that he must not touch fire by 
being burnt. Look at slavery. It was not plainly for- 
bidden, but no nation practised it without paying dearly 
for it. It devoured, like a slow disease, national pros- 
perity and uprightness. It was not so deadly to the 
earlier nations as it has been to the Southern States ; but 
then ancient slavery was not so bad as American slav- 
ery. Ancient slavery had no vast breeding system. Its 
ojjpression was more cruel, but it was not " so degrad- 
ing, so systematic, and so unrelenting." The slave had 
hope, had a chance of liberty, could hold some property, 
could receive some education : none of these things alle- 
viated slavery in America. Wherever it has prevailed 
in modern times, it has corroded family life, degraded 
national honor, and reduced flourishing lands to wil- 
dernesses. The Southern States would not learn that 
lesson from history. They were judged and sentenced 
by God. But their defeat was the natural result of 
their clinging to slavery. They were destitute of men 
and of means to fight the North. They had no middle 
class, no working-men class, they had no manufactories, 
scarcely any of the natural wealth of their States was 
worked, vast tracts of once productive land were ex- 
hausted. How could the Southerners succeed when all 
the vast resources of the North, supj3orted by a spiritual 
idea, were brought to bear upon them? The result 
could not be doubted for a moment. It was God's judg- 
ment, but it was naturally worked out. 

The conclusion I draw from this is that all national 
judgments of God come about naturally. 



220 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



But there are certain judgments mentioned in the 
Bible which seem to be supernatural, — the destruction 
of Sodom, of Sennacherib's army, of the Egyptians in 
the Red Sea, the plagues sent upon the Israelites, and 
others. These are the difficulty. How shall we explain 
them ? or shall we seek to explain them at all ? First, 
we must remember that the writers had not the knowl- 
edge capable of explaining them, that nature to them 
was an insoluble mystery. They naturally, then, re- 
ferred these things to a direct action of God, or rather, 
because they were out of the common, to an interference 
of God with nature. They were right in referring them 
to God ; but it is possible that, owing to their ignorance 
of nature, they were wrong in their way of explaining 
them. If they had seen clearly, they would have seen 
sufficient reason for them in ordinary causes. We ac- 
cept their teaching as far as it is connected with the 
spiritual world : we cannot accept it as far as it is con- 
cerned with the physical world, for they knew nothing 
about it. 

Secondly, there is a thought which goes far, if it be 
true, to explain these things : it is that the course 
of human history may be so arranged that, at times, 
healing or destructive natural occurrences coincide with 
crises in the history of a nation. For example, we 
might say that the sins of Sodom had reached their 
height at the very period when the elastic forces which 
were swelling beneath the plain of the Dead Sea had 
reached their last possible expansion. Or that the army 
of Sennacherib lay encamped in the way of the pestilen- 
tial wind, which would have blown over the spot whether 
they had been there or not. 



NATURALNESS OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 



221 



Thirdly, whatever difficulty these things j)resent to 
us in the Bible, the same difficulty occurs in what is 
profanely called profane history. There is not the 
slightest doubt that, had the Carthaginians been Jews, 
the earthquake at Thrasymene would have been repre- 
sented as a miraculous interference of God. There is 
not the slightest doubt, were your English history written 
by a Hebrew of the time of the kings, that the eclipse 
and the thunder-storm at Crecy, and that the storms 
which broke the Armada on the rocks of England and 
Scotland, would have been imputed to a miraculous in- 
terference by God with the course of nature. We do 
not believe these to have been miraculous; but we do 
believe them, with the Jew, to be of God. But we must 
also believe that they are contained in the order of the 
world, not disorderly elements arbitrarily introduced. 
That is, while believing in God as the Director and Ruler 
of human affairs, we must also believe in him as the 
Director and Ruler of the course of nature. While we 
believe revelation, Ave must not disbelieve God's other 
revelation in science. One is as necessary to believe in 
as the other. 

We see in all things this law holding good, — that 
God's judgments are natural. In these apjDarently super- 
natural judgments, it would also hold good, if we knew 
all; and our attitude toward science, therefore, should 
not be an attitude of attack, or even an attitude of de- 
fence, but an attitude of ready assistance and inquiry. 
We should endeavor, as religious men, not to attack 
scientific men because they endeavor to discover truth, 
but to assist them with all our j>ower, knowing that, the 
more we do in this way, the better chance there is of 



222 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



getting at the truth which will reconcile the teaching of 
science with the teaching of revelation. At present, we 
force on them the attitude of opposition, we call them 
names, we ourselves are frightened out of our senses at 
every new discovery. TV^e are faithless men. Neces- 
sarily, men of science attack us with contempt for our 
unbelief, and they are right ; though it is curious to 
watch how Pharisaism and priestcraft are creeping upon 
them, and how their hierarchy are reproducing, in intol- 
erance and ignorance of our position, the very sins and 
mistakes of which they accuse us. It would be worth 
while if we were both to try the other mode of action, 
and see if truth would not better come out of union than 
out of disunion. 

There is another class of occurrences which have been 
called judgments of God, but to which the term "judg- 
ment " is inapplicable. The circumstance mentioned in 
the text is an exanrnle of these, and the violent destruc- 
tion of human life by the late hurricane of Tortola is 
another of the same type. About the latter, I wish, in 
conclusion, to say a few words. 

There are even now some who say that the sufferers 
under these blows of nature suffer because they are 
under the special wrath of God. 

What does Christ say to that? He bluntly contra- 
dicts it. " I tell you nay," — it is not so. There are 
not a few who still blindly think that suffering proves 
God's anger. Has the Cross taught us nothing better 
than that, revealed to us no hidden secret, — not the 
explanation given by a fierce theology, that there we see 
God's necessary anger exj)ended on a surety, but the 
healing truth that there God's Love died for the sake of 



NATURALNESS OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 223 



man, and that the self-sacrifice did not expiate wrath, 
but manifest eternal Life, — was necessarily the salvation 
of man from death? The instant we realize this, our 
view of suffering is changed. We see it always, not as 
the misery-making, but as the redemptive, power in the 
world. There is no pain, mental or physical, which is 
not a part of God's continual self-sacrifice in us, and 
which, were we united to life, and not to death, we 
should not see as joy. Who regrets that the martyrs 
perished so cruelly? Not they themselves, not the 
Church whose foundations they cemented with their 
blood ! Sympathy we can give, but regret ? To regret 
their death is to dishonor them. Who can say that the 
death and pain of thousands in America for a great 
cause is matter of indignant sorrow ? They died, — half 
a million of them, — to establish a principle, and so to 
redeem from curse and degradation, for all the future, 
millions of their countrymen ; and they suffered devot- 
edly, and died well. And those young hearts in Italy 
who fell on the vine-sloj:>es of Mentana, fighting to the 
last, were they fools or redeemers? Redeemers, if the 
Cross be true. Every man who dies for Italy adds to 
Italy a new element of salvation, and makes it more 
impossible that she should much longer exist either as 
the slave of tyrants or the dupe of kings. It is an 
eternal law, — if you wish to save a thing, die for it; if 
you wish to redeem a man, suffer for him. And, when 
God lets men suffer and gives them to pain and death, 
it is not the worst or the guiltiest, but the best and the 
purest, whom he often chooses for his work; for they 
will do it best. Men wring their hands, and weep and 
wonder ; but the sufferers themselves accept the pain in 



224 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the joy of doing reclemptive work, and pass out of the 
region of complaint into that of the nobler spirit which 
rejoices that it is counted worthy to die for men. 

But, say others, God is cruel to permit such loss. 
Three thousand souls have perished in this hurricane. 
Is this your God of love ? 

But look at the history of the hurricane. A mass of 
heated air ascends, along a line of heated water. Two 
currents dash in right and left to fill the space : they 
clash, and a whirlwind, rotating on a vast scale, sweeps 
along the line. It is the only way in which the equi- 
librium of the air can be restored. Those who object 
to this arrangement will perhaps prefer that the air 
should be left quiet, in order to protect their notion of 
a God of love. Well, what is the result ? Instead of 
three thousand by a hurricane, thirty thousand perish 
by a j^estilence. 

" But why restore it so violently ? Could not God 
arrange to have a uniform climate over all the earth?" 
We are spiritually puzzled ; and, to arrange our doubts, 
God must make another world! We know not what 
we ask. A uniform climate over all the earth means 
simply the death of all living beings. It is the tropic 
heat and the polar cold which cause the currents of the 
ocean and the air, and keep them fresh and pure. A 
stagnant atmosphere, a rotting sea, that is what we ask 
for. It is well God does not take us at our word. When 
we wish the hurricane away, we wish away the tropic 
heats in the West Indies and along the whole equator. 
What do we do then ? We wish away the Gulf Stream, 
and annihilate England. How long would our national 
greatness last, if we had here the climate of Labrador. 



NATURALNESS OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. 225 



More than half of the solemn folly which is talked 
about a God of love not permitting these physical calam- 
ities is due to pure ignorance, is due to sceptical per- 
sons never reading God's revealed book of nature. A 
mere smattering of meteorology would answer all spirit- 
ual doubts of this kind of God's tenderness. 

Because a few perish, is God to throw the whole world 
into confusion ? The few must be sometimes sacrificed 
to the many. But they are not sacrificed without due 
warning. In this case, God tells us plainly, in his book 
of nature, that he wants to keep his air and his seas 
fresh and clean for his children to breathe and sail upon. 
The West Indies is the place where this work is done 
for the Korth Atlantic and its borders ; and, unless the 
whole constitution of the world be entirely changed, 
that work must be done by tornadoes. God has made 
that plain to us; and to all sailing and living about 
warm currents like the Gulf Stream it is as if God said : 
" Expect my hurricanes : they must come. You will 
have to face danger and death, and it is my law that 
you should face it everywhere in spiritual as well as 
physical life ; and to call me unloving because I impose 
this on you is to mistake the true ideal of your humanity. 
I mean to make you active men, not slothful dreamers. 
I will not make the world too easy for my children. I 
want veteran men, not untried soldiers, — men of endur- 
ance, foresight, strength, and skill for my work, — and I 
set before you the battle. You must face manfully those 
forces which you call destructive, but which are in real- 
ity reparative. In the struggle, all that belongs to your 
intellect — invention, activity, imagination, forethought, 
combination — will be enkindled and developed, and all 



226 



EAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the nobler qualities of the spirit — love to me and man, 
faith in me and man, sympathy with the race, tender 
guardianship, the purity of life which is born of activity 
of charity — will enter into you and mould you into my 
likeness." 

Brethren, we cannot complain of the destructive forces 
of nature. We should have been still savages, had we 
not to contend against them. But, oh ! we might bitterly 
complain of the ruin wrought by them, if the souls who 
perish in the contest died for evermore. 

What happened when the " Rhone," in mid-day mid- 
night, went down with all its souls on board ? Was it 
only the descent of a few bodies of men and women 
into the silence of an ocean death, or not rather the as- 
cension of a number of emancipated spirits into life? 
When the hungry sea had swallowed all, and the loud 
waves rolled onward unconcerned, where were the dead? 
We know not where ; but this we do believe : they were 
better off than they had been alive, the good in that 
they had entered into their rest, the evil in that God had 
taken in hand more sharply to consume their evil. For 
he will not let us go, evil or good, till he has brought us 
all to his perfection. It matters little whether we die by 
hurricane on the sleepless sea, or quietly by disease in 
the sleeping city: the result is the same, we go to a 
Father who is educating us, we fall into the hands of 
Eternal Justice. 



LIBERTY. 



1874. 

" Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." — Rom. 
xiv., 5. 

Liberty is one of the ideas on which the progress of 
mankind depends, and on it I speak to-day. It is, of 
course, necessary that, as far as possible, I should define 
what I mean by it, else we pass into that mere fine talk 
which produces a momentary and inactive enthusiasm, 
and does not supj)ort that love and devotion to liberty 
which is the parent of activity. If an idea is to rule 
life, we must be able to say what we mean by it. Other- 
wise, like Ixion, we embrace a cloud. 

It is now said that liberty is not only an indefinite 
term, but that it is nothing more than a negation. VTe 
are told, in order to prove its indefiniteness, that it has 
meant different things to different people and at differ- 
ent times ; and that, if you ask a number of persons, they 
will give different explanations of it according to their 
prejudices or desires. And that is true enough. But, all 
the same, it does not prove that the idea is indefinite in 
itself. It is the characteristic of any large idea to take 
different forms at different times, — in fact, it must do 
so : it is the characteristic of an idea to grow as mankind 



228 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



advances, and its form is therefore sure to change. Out- 
wardly, it must always be in a condition of weaving and 
unweaving, of ebb and flow, of birth and death. But, if 
people took the trouble, they could at any time arrive at 
its root, and express that in a definite statement. That 
trouble they do not take, and naturally enough. They 
are too closely involved in the struggle for a particular 
part of the idea, to ask themselves about the other parts 
and to collect them all under one expression. That is 
the work of the student. 

But, again, the idea of liberty does not seem one whit 
indefinite to those who at any period are struggling for 
it. Those who loved and fought for it at the great Re- 
bellion, or at any time in our history, knew right well 
what they contended for. It may have been only part 
of the idea for which they fought, but it was a definite 
part of it. And we, looking back now on our own his- 
tory and on the history of man, can point to fifty great 
human efforts for liberty, and say, All those were strug- 
gles for portions of the idea of liberty, and the results 
arrived at are definite parts of the idea. "We can take 
these results, generalize them, and find one expression 
which will include them all. And, having found that 
expression, we can predict, with some accuracy, the new 
forms the idea is likely to take in the future, and define 
them. 

It is really nonsense to say that the idea of liberty is 
only a negation. Men do not feel so strongly about 
any mere negation as they do about liberty, and when a 
man feels, I am free, or I am not free, he is feeling 
about something which is as positive to him as his own 
existence. 



LIBEETY. 



229 



The difficulty, however, in any clear definition, arises 
from this : that the necessary action of the State in 
restriction of absolute freedom of action must be con- 
sidered. There are many things people cannot be al- 
lowed to do ; there are times when for the safety of the 
whole, or for the growth of the whole State, certain 
things, as, for example, liberty to burn one's self alive in 
India, or to keep one's children from school in England, 
must be prohibited. 

The statement, then, which we desire to generalize 
from all the various definitions of liberty at different 
times, ought to be one which should not interfere with 
the just and recognized work of the State, and at the 
same time one which should not be so wide as to allow 
the State to ride roughshod over it, which should again 
and again step in and prevent the State from falling into 
its common habit of meddling too much, of enacting 
restrictive laws for the sake of expediency. 

I should express, then, the idea of liberty in this way: 
that every sane person has the absolute right of free 
thought and its expression, and that there should not 
be any restraint whatsoever placed on his expression of 
thought on any subject. That I hold to be the last 
generalization of the idea of liberty-, and I want no more. 
It gives me all I want. In politics, when every one is 
entirely free to discuss the different forms of govern- 
ment, to think his own thoughts and to say his say about 
them, the best form of government and the freest will be 
arrived at in the end. All we want is absolute freedom 
of thought and discussion, even of subjects supposed to 
be dangerous to the State, even of forms of government 
which directly contradict the existing form. And, on 



230 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the whole, we have got that in England, and, having got 
it, we can in the end make prevail any new parts of the 
idea of liberty we may wish to work out. If those parts 
are really necessary to the idea, we have only to pro- 
claim them, and they will win their way in time. 

In the case of religious liberty, the same thing holds. 
We should have the right to think and express our 
thoughts on all religious subjects, and there should be no 
State restraint whatsoever uj:)on this. That is also, on 
the whole, the case in this country. The existence of 
a State Church may seem to deny it, with its subscrip- 
tions and legal restrictions. And up to a certain point 
it does, and for myself I have no doubt that before long 
a State Church will perish. But it has felt the general 
influence of the idea. Its work for the last twenty years 
has not been one of restriction. It has added no new 
restraints; on the contrary, it has so loosened obliga- 
tions that, so far as the law goes, almost any religious 
opinion, a few doctrines being distinctly held, may be 
expressed within its limits. Subscription has been re- 
duced by law to a merely nominal thing ; and so far as 
State restriction goes, and leaving out the freaks of indi- 
vidual conscience, he would be a very subtle person who 
did not feel himself, provided he was not a pure theist 
or an atheist, at a very large liberty of thought in the 
English Church. At present, it is the religious body in 
which men's ojnnions are allowed the fullest freedom, in 
which the idea of liberty, in its relation to religion, has 
the largest development. 

This, then, which we find in England nearly complete, 
the right, wholly unrestrained, of individual thought and 
of its exj^ression, is the best and most definite expression 



LIBERTY. 



231 



of the idea of liberty. It is the real ground of all the 
noble struggles for freedom that the world has seen. 
When we get back as far as we can to the farthest cause 
of wars of liberty, of reformations and revolutions for 
liberty, that is the last expression which we come to. 
That idea, then, is the root of all developments of lib- 
erty, the centre whence all the various radii diverge. 
And that is what we are to love and devote our lives to, 
and die for, if need be ; and in loving it, and in sacrifice 
for it, we love and sacrifice ourselves for the race. 
Whenever we say, think, and do anything inspired by it, 
no matter how humble or how retired our life, we assist 
the onward movement of man : whenever we deny it 
or are false to it in act, even in the little range of our 
own family, we are living for ourselves and injuring 
mankind. 

The State that in all its work consistently holds to 
this idea of liberty promotes the good, not only of its 
own special subjects, but the good of the whole race. 
The State that in any way whatsoever prescribes it or 
disables it injures itself, and injures man. 

Now, I call that definite enough : thought and its 
expression are to be absolutely free, no restraint what- 
ever is to be placed upon them. That is the idea. And, 
if you ask where are the restraints to be found, then, 
against evil thoughts and evil opinions, and the evil their 
proj^agation is likely to do, I say that they are only to 
be rightly found within the idea itself, — in the free ex- 
pression (in opposition to evil opinions) of good opinions, 
and in the victory these are certain to have in the end. 

And now, having got our definition, and therefore 
our idea of liberty, what are the religious grounds on 



232 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



which we cling to it? In stating these, — and these 
have not been stated, the subject has not been ap- 
proached from this side, — I will show my reason for the 
assunrption I make, that the best ojrinions and ideas 
will, after free discussion, prevail in the end. 

1. This idea on the side of religion is founded on 
the fact that God has made each one of us a distinct 
person ; that we each possess, and are bound to act up 
to, an individuality. I have an intellect, heart, charac- 
ter, and life of my OAvn, modified by circumstances and 
by the influence of others, but my own ; and I have a 
body of thought as the result of this, which I have a 
more absolute right to than I have to my property, and 
which I am bound to express by a stronger duty than 
that which binds me to my property. Why is that? 
From the religious point of view, I answer, Because it is 
God who has made you an individual, it is he himself 
who in you has made you a representative of a distinct 
phase of his being, a doer of a distinct part of his 
work. Christianity says the same thing. It revealed 
and insisted on the distinct and individual relation of 
every separate soul to God and to its fellows. And in 
so doing it fell in with the strongest element in human 
nature, the personal element, that element which in its 
ceaseless growth in each man has created the idea of 
liberty. Falling in with that element, it promoted nec- 
essarily the idea of liberty ; and, if anything is remark- 
able in Christianity, it is the way in which it gave an 
impulse to individual thought and to the freedom of 
self-development. When God in Christ said to every 
man and woman, You are infinitely worthy as a person 
in my eyes, you have a distinct personal relation to 



LIBERTY. 



233 



me: your thought is your own, and you must rather 
die than allow it to be forced, or give it up for the sake 
of earthly rewards, he confirmed and gave a new im- 
pulse to every effort of liberty, and he fixed its idea. 
Of course, the whole range of the ideas of the cultured 
and political classes were against that doctrine of indi- 
viduality, and it had slow growth. The Church itself, 
more wise than the State, took the popular ideas of 
restriction of opinion, and used them with the help of 
outward force. But the idea of liberty of thought and 
its expression was too strong for State and Church in 
the end; and, though their restrictions linger still, the 
idea has prevailed and will prevail, for God directs it. 
Xo one can now say it is indefinite or a negation, with- 
out blindness. In every reformation of religion, in every 
political revolution, it has been the one grand thought at 
their root. God has made it pretty plain that it is one 
of the ideas which are absolutely needful for the prog- 
ress of mankind ; and it is founded on the first religious 
and Christian idea, that every single soul is a distinct 
child of God, for whose perfect development as a per- 
son he cares and works. 

But that development is impossible, if thought and 
its expression are restrained. For a father to do that 
for a child is bad enough, for a State or a Church to 
do it for a large number of their subjects is worse still. 
And, whenever this liberty is repressed by force of 
law or arms, those who do it are fighting against God. 
And men have always felt this ; and every struggle for 
liberty of thought becomes a religious one, and ought 
to be considered as such. And it is confessed to be 
such by those who share in the struggle, except when 



234 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the Clmrcli has taken the side of repression, and forced 
the contenders for liberty into irreligion. But what- 
ever side the Church took, and however irreligious the 
contenders for liberty were, the struggle itself, in its 
absolute relation to things, was religious ; for it was on 
the side of God. 

That is one religious foundation of the idea. The 
other religious ground of the idea is in truth an exten- 
sion of the former. It is this, — God is educating not 
only persons, but the race. His end is to bring it to 
perfection. But he does this not in the manner of a 
paternal despot who makes people good by force, not in 
any supernatural way, but within the ordinary laws of 
human nature. 

He does not tell men what is best, and impel them 
into it at once. He respects the freedom of the creat- 
ures he has kindled into being, and bids them find out 
through experience and effort the best things ; while he 
keeps at the same time a general direction of the whole, 
assists the effort when it is toward good, and moves in 
the whole race and its history as a spirit of love and 
freedom and power and goodness. 

It follows, if this theory be true, and it follows as a 
part of the theory, that there is a necessity, in order 
that men should discover what is good to believe and act 
on, that they should go through every possible view of 
anything they need to believe or use, and arrive at the 
right idea of it by exhausting all the wrong ones. Then 
and not till then can they finally discern the right one, 
and saying, This form, and this, and this of the idea, are 
wrong, and proved to be wrong by their evil results, but 
this is the right one, and proved to be so by every day's 



LIBERTY. 



235 



experience, secure at last, after ages of discussion, an 
eternal truth. 

We hold then, first, that God practically says to man : 
Fight out every question. I give you absolute freedom 
of thought on them, and I wish you to use it. I wish 
you when you have any thought on them to express it, 
and I give you absolute freedom to do so. And that is 
the real state of things which we find to have prevailed 
on looking back at history. Every great question, every 
great idea, has been represented in a thousand forms of 
thought; and all have been freely fought over. Some 
are still under discussion, as the idea of liberty, for 
example ; others, we may say, are settled in civilized 
countries, but it has taken centuries to settle them. On 
the whole, and often by reason of the very elements 
which seem to oppose it, there has been in this world 
a fierce freedom of discussion and thought ; and it has 
had its source in God. 

We hold, secondly, since God guides the world, that 
however fierce the battle, and however confusing the 
chaos of opinions, the best and noblest thing will in the 
end prevail, and its idea in its right and perfect form 
stand clear at last, and be recognized by all. And when 
all the ideas which are necessary for man to believe and 
act on have gone through this long series of experiments, 
and are known and loved by all, then will the race be 
perfect. 

Now, these things, being believed, are a ground of the 
idea of liberty I have put forward. We ought to fall in 
with the method of God's education of the race ; and the 
way to do it is for the State in public life, and for our- 
selves in social and private life, to give perfect liberty of 



236 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



thought and its expression on all possible subjects. But, 
then, there will be continual contest, disturbance, differ- 
ence, and no peace. Certainly, what else can you ex- 
pect? It is the natural result. It will happen whether 
you like it or not, and all your efforts after repression of 
thought will only increase the disturbance. You are 
fighting, when you restrain thought, against a law of 
humanity, and, instead of making peace, you only double 
war. Recognize the law, chime in with it, and assist 
and stimulate the battle of opinion. The peace you 
desire can only be won through this war. Not till every 
ojnnion on any large question is worked through can 
peace on that question be attained. 

But men are frightened to do this. They say that 
immoral or evil opinions will be put forward ; and that 
this will hinder the progress of mankind, that opinions 
dangerous to the welfare of the State, dangerous to lib- 
erty, dangerous to political progress, will be put for- 
ward, and that these will do cruel damage. Therefore, 
they think there is no hope of solution except in author- 
ity, in repressing or discouraging by the strong hand of 
the State thoughts which we know to be evil for man- 
kind or perilous to the State. I say that is not only a 
sin, in that it violates liberty, but a folly, in that it has 
been proved a hundred times that it does not attain its 
end. It only strengthens the false opinion, it only gives 
new life to the dangerous one. Place a dam across a 
river, you do not diminish the volume of water behind 
it, you only give it force in that particular place. You 
may be very comfortable below it for a time where you 
have lessened the amount of water ; but the time comes 
when the river swells, and then where is your dam, and 
what is its result ? The devastation of an inundation. 



LIBERTY. 



237 



" But, if we allow absolute freedom of thought and 
expression, we do not produce any clear ideas on any 
subject, only a chaos of opinions, as, for exanrple, on the 
subject of liberty." That is only too likely to be your 
view, if you do not believe in a God who is educating 
the race. And you are driven back, having no faith or 
hope, on the plan of authority ; but the true lover of 
liberty, who believes in God as a divine and guiding 
spirit in men, has not only hope, but certainty, that a 
solution will be found. He knows that the best and 
highest view of the idea will in the end prevail ; and 
that the more liberty of discussion he gives, even of evil 
and dangerous opinions, the sooner will the solution be 
arrived at. 

These are the religious grounds on which we base our 
idea of liberty ; and for that idea, so founded, we are 
ready to die. "We ought to love it with all our heart 
and soul ; we ought to sacrifice anything and everything 
for it ; we ought to devote our life and all our powers to 
extend it ; we ought to be true to it, no matter how 
alluring the temptation to palter with it. And we ought 
to love it as a part of our religion, for we know that it is 
the will of God, when we look at the revelation he gave 
through Christ, and at the revelation he has given in the 
course of history. I hold, then, that all restraint of opin- 
ion and its expression is irreligious. All disabling laws 
are irreligious, no matter how expedient they may seem ; 
that is, all laws which make the expression of thought on 
any subjects whatever a crime to be punished by the 
State. The State has nothing to do with opinion. It is 
quite different when opinions are put into overt acts. 
Of these, the State has cognizance. It has a perfect 



238 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



right to step in there, and say, You have a right to hold 
your opinion, to preach it, and make it prevail, if you 
can. If you can, it will, through winning a majority to 
its side, become 2^rt of the law of the State ; but, till 
you do make it prevail, I have a right to prevent your 
putting it into act, and to punish you if you do, and in 
so doing I do not violate but secure liberty. And, if you 
do get a very large number to hold your view, and not 
being able to make it prevail in the free council of the 
State, and seeing, too, that it is getting weaker instead 
of stronger, — as, for example, was the case in America 
with regard to the question of slavery, — you choose to 
support it overtly in arms, I have a right, in the inter- 
ests of liberty of thought, to go to war with you, and 
compel you, if I can, to bow to the more prevalent 
opinion. 

That would be the case in free States where liberty 
of thought and its expression on political subjects is 
allowed by the State. 

Then there is another class of questions much dis- 
cussed at present, — marriage, education, and others. To 
insist on civil marriages, to make education compulsory, 
to say that every clergyman connected with the State 
should take a university degree, does not in the slightest 
infringe on the idea of liberty I have laid down, if the 
State at the same time permits the freest possible dis- 
cussion of these things ; if it says, Preach, teach, protest, 
agitate against them as much as you will, strive your 
best to make the opj)osite views prevail. But, if it not 
only frames these laws, but also makes it penal to agitate 
against them by free speech, then it does violate liberty, 
and is committing a sin and a folly. 



LIBEETY. 



239 



And this I hold that Germany is now doing in the 
matter, not of the above laws, but on the question 
of papal infallibility. It has said, To preach this doc- 
trine is dangerous to the State. It conflicts with my 
ideas, it hinders progress, it is injurious to freedom, and 
I will make the teaching of it ]:>enal. Your priests have 
taken the oath of allegiance to the State, and belong to 
a State Church. This new faith of yours contradicts 
your oath, and you must give up the expression of it. 
You may say that you submit to the rule of the State 
Church ; but, if you teach this opinion, I will hold that 
it violates those rules, and make a law to that effect to 
restrain your oj)inion. 

The State has no right to do that, if it pretends to 
be a free State. Its action violates the idea of liberty. 
If German liberals say that this is being true to liberty, 
they must be either very blind or very hypocritical. I 
do not accuse them of the latter. They are really 
carried away by hatred of an illiberal system into a 
deliberate violation of liberty. They choose to violate 
liberty for the sake of what they think to be liberty. 
They have got no clear idea of what the idea of liberty 
is. And they are utterly wrong. They are placing expe- 
diency before right ; they are fighting against human 
nature in fighting against the free thought of the indi- 
vidual and its expression : they are fighting against God 
in fighting against his will that all truth should be ar- 
rived at only by absolute freedom of discussion. And 
it is downright persecution ; and surely we know that 
persecution of opinion is wrong. If I am told truly, 
there are a number of Roman Catholic churches entirely 
shut up in the Rhine Provinces. What does that mean? 



240 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



It is not only wrong, it is folly. Have we not learned 
yet, has history not yet made it clear, that persecution 
is a mistake, — that it invariably weakens the State, even 
when it gains its end of destroying or expelling those it 
persecutes? What did it do for Spain when it drove 
out the Moors and decimated the Jews? What for 
France, when it made the country too hot for the 
Huguenots? It is double folly at this time of the world, 
when it cannot do its work completely by extermination, 
but only proceed by fine and imprisonment. The result 
will show its folly. It will be to strengthen ultramon- 
tanism in Germany, and to extend its life. For the State 
to make its opponents martyrs is to deepen their j)ower. 
ITltramontanism will die out ; but this sort of thing 
will be a cordial to its decaying body. It is further 
wrong in that such a law directly tempts men to do 
wrong. No sin could be greater or more degrading 
than that any man, believing an opinion to be right, 
should cease to teach it for the sake of escaping ]mnish- 
ment or of gaining worldly reward ; and all laws that 
make opinion penal temj)t men to that. You may say 
individual opinion must be sacrificed to the welfare of 
the State. Yes, the individual may do that of his own 
free will, and be right in doing so. But that is very dif- 
ferent from this, which forces him or tries to force him 
to do so : it is not a sacrifice you claim from him, it is 
self-degradation ; and the degradation of any citizen of 
the State weakens the State by the lowering of the 
moral tone of the citizen. And, lastly, the very excuse 
made for it is as wrong and as foolish as it is itself. " All 
ultramontane views opj^ose and hinder liberty, and re- 
tard the j)rogress of man : we are right to repress their 



LIBERTY. 



241 



being taught because they do so." That is, liberty is 
violated for the sake of liberty. This is the old iniqui- 
tous thing, a leaf out of the book of the very Jesuitry 
they are opposing, " The end justifies the means, let us 
do evil for the sake of good." That is a wrong excuse, 
it is a foolish excuse also. To tell lies for the sake of 
truth has never succeeded; and to violate liberty — no 
matter how expedient it may seem, no matter how dan- 
gerous to liberty the opinions repressed may be — has 
never strengthened liberty. And just as much harm as 
pious frauds have done to religion, so much harm to be 
illiberal for the sake of liberty does to liberty. 

It is in order to express sympathy with the German 
struggle against ultramontanism, of which this perse- 
cuting law is an integral part, that there are meetings 
to be held this week in London. I trust that those 
who direct them will, while apj)roving of some of the 
Falk laws, mark their disapproval of that one which 
violates the idea of liberty I have ventured to lay down. 
If they are liberals and they suffer themselves to be be- 
trayed into approval of it, they will be contradicting all 
the principles we have been contending for during more 
than two centuries. I fear that many will be hurried 
away through dislike of ultramontanism, and, for the 
sake, as they think, of liberty, to some sort of approval. 
I am already dismayed by hearing the old arguments 
used by those who opposed the repeal of the penal laws 
against the Catholics, arguments which went on the 
ground that Catholic opinions were dangerous to liberty, 
used now by men who have been up to this moment, 
when they are irritated by the views of the ultramon- 
tanes, true partisans of liberty. And I and many others 



242 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



are asking, Have men really no clear idea of liberty, no 
firm ground on which to place it, that now prejudice or 
expediency at once carries them away ? It is, of course, 
hard to resist using authority when one has to contend 
against a retrograde and degrading set of ideas, such as 
those of the ultramontanes ; but surely we ought to be 
able to hold fast in the midst of our irritation to our 
idea, and keep it in its purity. And I am very sorry, as 
a matter of wisdom and for the sake of liberty, that the 
meeting is to be held. It will have two results: it will 
strengthen ultramontanism in this country, and it will 
raise the old, wild, unreasoning Protestant cry, with all 
its attendant intolerance, in the mass of the uncultivated 
people of this city. 

It is in cases like this that we are called u])on to 
hold fast to our idea. Do not let hatred of that which 
is against liberty lead you to be false to liberty. Love 
your idea too well to be untrue to it, even for its own 
sake. Believe in it too strongly to be afraid of any 
opinions that oj3pose it. Say to men like the ultramon- 
tanes, who stand in the way of truth and knowledge and 
freedom, I believe in liberty : therefore, the more you 
express your opinions, the better. Say to yourself, God 
wishes free thought and individual expression of it; 
therefore, I know I am right in refusing to use authority 
of any kind for its repression, and in disapproving the 
action of any State so far as it uses it. Say to yourself, 
God is educating the world through the battle of free 
thought: therefore, the noblest view of the idea of lib- 
erty must prevail in the end ; and, in order that it may 
more quickly prevail, let us exhaust by free discussion of 
them all the ignoble ones. I know that all the false ones 



LIBERTY. 



243 



will go down : my part is to be true to the true idea, to 
love it, to devote myself to it, to sacrifice myself for it. 
And in doing so I devote myself, so far forth, to the race 
of man ; I love and sacrifice myself for man ; I follow the 
example and live by the spirit of Jesus Christ. 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 



1875. 

" What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of 
them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go 
after that which is lost, until he find it ? " — Luke xv., 5. 

Within this outward world, which we think so real, 
but which is only a shadow, lies the inward actual world. 
It is invisible to our eyes, inaudible to our ears. Visions 
of it come and go before us, notes of its music, hints of 
its truths, just touch us, who are common men, and go. 
It is hard; for all life and all knowledge and all rest 
consist in our winning some of its realities, in finally 
finding enough of it to gain the j:>ower of living in it. 
Happily for us, there are men and women born into the 
world who are very near it, who live on its frontier, who 
often pass into it. These have what we call genius. It 
is the mark of genius that it sees the invisible world, 
hears its music, feels its thoughts. You may think I 
speak only of the spiritual world which has to do with 
the spirit of man in its relation to God. Not so : that is 
only one part of the actual world of which our world is 
the shadow. The true world is as much the invisible 
one in all the secular realms of thought and feeling and 
act as it is in the spiritual realms of thought and feeling, 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 245 



and we must get into it at all points before we can truly- 
live. It is men of genius who are the mediators between 
us and it, the way by which we enter into it. They 
reveal the unknown life and music and truth : we see 
the things they reveal, love them, and shall finally attain 
them. 

The artist sees within the block a beautiful thing, and 
carves it for men ; and it becomes a living thing to him 
and us, a thing not of this world, but of the invisible 
world. It lives for us, and we love it. The story of 
Pygmalion is no dream. Another sees in every quiet 
nook among the hills, in every stormy battle of the 
clouds, not the relations of color and form that seem to 
us, but the emotions and life of the living Being, the 
movement of whose heart and brain makes the world to 
us ; and it is these he paints. We look at the picture, 
and we see the invisible world through his work. The 
great natural philosopher, like Newton or Faraday, sees 
the ideas that make the material world hang together, 
and knows the truth he has to prove before he proves it. 
The great poet does not build up by reasoning the talk 
of Othello and Iago, and Romeo and Juliet : he has 
heard them speak, and seen the chamber at Cyprus, the 
orchard at Verona, — only the names are nothing, the 
world in which they are is the invisible world of the 
human emotions. The great musician listens with no 
earthly ear to his music. That which he makes us hear 
he has heard, sung, and played where no waves of air 
repeat the vibrations. 

Eye hath not seen nor ear heard what these men feel. 
But, when they make them into form, we hear and see, 
though it is only dimly, something of that invisible and 



246 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



inaudible world which is the true one, and we are led 
away from the apparent world which surrounds us to 
love and seek the other ; and, as we seek, we learn a 
little, and that little helps us forward, till more and more 
our inner eye and ear are awakened, and at last we see 
and hear for ourselves, and then we are happy. We 
have lost the shadow world, and gained the substantial. 
We know the worth of the sensible things, that they are 
shadows useful only to tell us that there are real things 
that cast them. And, the real things attained, we think 
no more of their shadows. 

In this effort, of what use is the intellect acting by 
itself? It is of no use at all till the truth is seen, and 
it never sees or can see truth. It has to do with the 
phenomenal world alone, with the shadows of the true. 
All it can do is to make the shadows darker and their 
outlines more defined. Those who work by it alone 
think when they have done this that they have discov- 
ered truth. They have only made truth more difficult 
to reach, because they have persuaded us, as so many 
try to persuade us now, that the shadows are real. 
Truth is never discovered : it is seen, and then revealed. 
When it is seen, and only then, is the intellect of any 
use. Then comes in its service. It makes the truth 
more clear, confirms and fits it for practical use by 
showing how the shadows we call facts bear witness to 
the truth that casts them, by showing the relation the 
apj)arent world bears to the real, by enabling us to make 
use of the shadows to grasp the real things more firmly. 

I daresay few of you will believe all this. It may be 
true, you will say, in the spiritual world. It is not true 
in the realms of art, science, or philosophy. I think it is. 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 247 



I make no distinction between the methods and princi- 
ples of the spiritual and secular worlds. There is one 
mind at the root of both, and in both the mere intellect 
is worthless till truth is seen. In both, all truth comes 
to us by Revelation ; and, when Revelation has given it, 
then it is reasoned on for confirmation and application. 

Those whom we call men of genius in knowledge and 
art, we call prophets in the spiritual world. They are 
seers, who see directly the truths of God's relation to 
man, and of man's to God. They declare these truths, 
they do not attemjDt to prove them : they let them prove 
themselves. Some receive them at once, others say they 
must prove them by reasoning; but they can only be 
seen, not proved. They can never be reasoned upon 
with any practical use till the reasoner has felt the life 
and seen the beauty in them. And it will be hard for 
a man who thinks intellect the first and greatest power 
to do this, for they generally traverse and deny the 
reasoning of centuries. Naturally, for they deny the 
very existence of that which is apparent, that very thing 
on which the intellect only employs itself. 

All this is illustrated by the scene and the parable on 
the main subject of which we preached last Sunday. 
Long theological reasonings had convinced the Phari- 
sees and Scribes that their scheme of the universe of 
spirit was the only true one. It followed that all those 
who did not agree with them had nothing to do with 
God; that all those who, like Christ, disagreed with 
their opinions and practice, that all those whom their 
society rejected for certain open sins, like the publicans 
and sinners, were excluded. They thought no more of 
them as individuals : they classed them into one mass, 



248 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



and called them the lost. The notion that God had to do 
with them as individuals, that he must consider them as 
such, was impossible to their intellect. They did not 
even try to prove a negative, for they could not conceive 
a negative. Christ, on the other hand, knew of their 
reasonings, but thought them contemptible. Their world 
was not his world at all. He did not reason, he saw. 
And this is what he saw : he saw God in distinct per- 
sonal relation with every human soul present. He saw 
them all as children, each with a separate being, and 
each connected with God and dear to him in a different 
way from the others. Each was a living personality 
linked to a living Father. 

That was the invisible fact he saw; and it cut right 
across all the long lines of theology which the Pharisees 
had laid down after years of intellectual work on their 
notions of God. And no wonder; for it is plain, sup- 
posing it true, that it is not a truth which the intellect 
can reach or prove. It shines by its own light, if it 
shines at all. Even when it is received, all the intellect 
of man can do with it is to apply it, not to prove it. It 
cannot be proved in the way of reasoning. 

Indeed, the intellect of man, working out its reason- 
ings on society, on the races of mankind, on men's 
physical and moral constitution, has always arrived at 
conclusions which either directly deny that truth, or 
implicitly deny it. It must have struck the Pharisees 
as ridiculous: it is equally absurd to a number of 
religious sects to-day, who cannot conceive that the 
Roman Catholic, or the Unitarian, or the atheist, or the 
open sinner, or the High Churchman, or the liberal theo- 
logian, is each the special child of God. They are 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 249 



lost classes, not individuals, whom God is seeking. It 
contradicts just as much all the tendencies of ancient 
and modern philosophies, and all the tendencies of mod- 
ern social and physiological science. It runs counter to 
all that scientific thought, which makes us automatons or 
machines, or mixes us up with nature, or labels us only 
as superior animals. It is equally at variance with all 
the philosophies which, beginning from biology, make us 
only the creatures of development, not only in body, but 
in conscience, thought, and feeling, and mingle us up 
with the whole race, which say, "Humanity lives, but 
its parts each perish." Yes : it is altogether unconform- 
able with all the most laborious efforts by which human 
reasoning, working in its favorite daylight, has tried to 
explain what we are, and whence we come. It pro- 
claims the distinct individuality and eternity and divin- 
ity of each human soul, the individual and separate 
preciousness of each. It isolates each man with God, 
though in another point of view it unites them all with 
him and one another. Pharisee and Scribe might say 
what they would, lose the thought of the sinner in the 
sinfulness of the class, see m the publican a necessary 
outcast (part of the dross by purging itself of which 
the gold of society becomes clear), Christ, the Seer of 
the Invisible, held their speech as vile, and saw — what? 
Saw all the pity of the earth, and the Mighty God, and 
the whole host of heavenly intelligences concentrating 
their eager thought, their passionate endeavor, their love 
and interest, and their joy round one wandering human 
soul. " What man of you having a hundred sheep, if 
he lose one of them. . . . Likewise, I say unto you, there 
is joy in the presence of the angels of heaven over one 
sinner that repenteth." 



250 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



That is a revelation, — one of the invisible truths 
which we believe, because it exalts our whole nature 
and makes beautiful the world of man, and makes God 
beautiful, and fills our life with joy and hope and self- 
sacrifice and faith and trust, and thrills us with emotion 
in which we rise into God, — but which we do not be- 
lieve, but would rather deny, when we investigate the 
problem of mankind by the help of the intellect alone. 

Christ then declares here the absolute distinctness of 
individual being. But on what ground? On this, — that 
each man is in separate and unbreakable union with 
God. There is, properly speaking, only one Being in 
the whole universe, only one self-existing Being. To 
conceive that seems to be a necessity of thought, if we 
do not deny Being. But the very power of conceiving 
it seems to prove that we are part of it. We could not 
conceive of self-existent Being, were we not conscious our- 
selves of Being; and to be conscious of Being is to be 
conscious of God. When we feel that we are, we feel God 
in us, or rather God himself becomes in us self-conscious. 
A part of him, a phase of his beauty or knowledge or love, 
takes form in us. This is our individuality ; and it would 
be perfect in us, as it was in Christ, if we could feel, as 
he did, that all our thoughts were thoughts of God, that 
all our words and actions were the speech and deed of 
God, — if we could say, "I and my Father are one." 
Toward that we are struggling all our lives ; to that, at 
some time or another, eternity will bring us. And the 
first step toward it is to believe that we are (by our very 
being, and because we are) indissolubly united to God; 
so that, if we wander away from him, he must seek us, 
and we must be found of him. And the must consists 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 251 



in this: that, if we were lost, a part of Infinite Being 
would be missing forever, which is an absurdity. 

There exists, then, between us and God a distinct per- 
sonal relation, different in each person, and different 
forever. No one can ever be mixed up with another, no 
one can ever approach God or be approached by him, in 
exactly the same way. Of all the infinite number of 
human spirits, there has not been one whose relation to 
God has been the same. In one aspect, in our personal 
relation to God, each one of us and he are alone in the 
universe. 

Nothing can proclaim more strongly or create more 
vividly the doctrine of human individuality, and it is a 
Christian creation. It has run into great evils: in its 
corruptions, it has stimulated religious selfishness, and 
made persecutions, and brought forth asceticism, and 
created a license of thought and act which has done 
harm, or seemed to do harm. But the evils sink into 
nothing before the good that has flowed from it. It has 
been at the root of all liberty of thought, of all the 
struggles for political liberty. It has, in claiming and 
carrying out man's right to develop his own being, been 
at the root of all increase of knowledge, of the arts, of 
culture. It has also, in so doing, made manifold and 
complex, with a million individual efforts, all the simple 
ideas and feelings, so that life has been indefinitely en- 
riched. It has placed ideas and truths in a thousand 
different ways before mankind, so that the universe of 
thought and feeling is more infinitely varied than the 
universe of nature, and human life, as the world goes on, 
grows in interest and delight. In its infinite production 
of infinite forms of spiritual thought and emotion, it has 



252 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



made us know something of the infinite God. It is an 
idea which is the salt of the earth, and we owe its 
revelation to Christ. 

And I am sure it was wanted and is wanted. The 
tendency of society is to make men all of one pattern, 
to repress all that is original, to tyrannize over all indi- 
viduality. Imperialism tries to force all thought into 
harmony with the will of one, democracy into harmony 
with the will of the many. Religious opinion classes us 
into bad and good, and forgets the infinite modifications 
of both. Political party wants us to act with our party, 
and classes us by party (justly enough, as religion also, 
for its own purposes) ; but it is one tendency the more 
against individuality. Science tells us that we are neces- 
sary results of all that has gone before, that we could not 
help ourselves, and that we cannot do so now. Given 
such a body, such arrangement toward growth of atoms, 
such a disarrangement in them as we call hereditary 
disease, we will be this or that infallibly. That wars 
against individuality. The root of individuality is that 
we have a living will within, which may be master, and 
can conquer circumstances, and compel development, in 
spite of nature ; which is not the effect, but the master 
(by right of a different and higher being in it), of our 
physical nature. Science denies that, and I am very 
sorry for those who deny it. Of late, it has gone fur- 
ther; and now it tends to make us think of ourselves as 
only necessary parts of a great machine, and of our 
actions and thoughts as mechanical, — worse still, auto- 
matic, so that we cannot be said even to think or act 
truly at all. No, nor even to feel. A mother's love for 
her child is the resultant of a vast number of past 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 253 



atomic motions. Our love for one another reduces itself 
at last to physical arrangement, our sense of beauty to 
the same. 

What is the use of trying to prove all these things? 
They never can be proved ; and, if they seemed to be 
proved, the mass of men — thank God ! — would not be- 
lieve them. They are very odious in themselves, and the 
efforts to prove them are mere waste of time and intel- 
ligence. It is almost pitiable to see all this hard work 
spent in trying to prove a negative the belief in which 
arises from these men having shut one of their eyes. It 
is more than pitiable, it is an evil thing to override the 
world with these theories ; for they go with all the other 
tendencies which war against individuality. We cease 
to be persons : we are made by these theories only one of 
the forms of physical nature. 

Then there are all the philosophers of to-day who 
wither the individual for the sake of the race. I have 
almost forsworn any more usage of the word " race." 
I have almost thought of giving up any more j)reaching 
of self-sacrifice for the use and good of the race ; and I 
would do so, were it not to be as provincial as they, if 
I were to refuse to look at their side of the shield be- 
cause they sit fixed in such ecstatic contemplation of it 
as to be unable to see the other, which asserts the impor- 
tance of individual being. But, though one does not 
give up the truths which lie in the idea that we must 
surrender personal inclinations and live with the thought 
of the happiness and good of the coming humanity as 
one of our first motives, one is bound at the same time 
to protest against the whole swallowing the parts. The 
good of the race is not our only motive for life : it must 



254 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



be coincident with careful self-development for the sake 
of our everlasting connection with God. That is selfish, 
they cry. No, it is not ; for its end is union with perfect 
love. It is degrading to the loftier ideas, they cry. Is 
it? Compare the results in the case of ideas. This 
philosophy has lost the idea of God, and replaced it by 
the idea of a humanity which is destined to perish as 
a whole, and every part of which perishes forever, each 
soul dropping day by day into eternal night for the sake 
of those who also are to drop into an abyss of nothing- 
ness. Is that notion of a divinity to worship loftier than 
the idea of God? Is that notion of all-overmastering 
death, of the final destruction of all the thought and love 
and beauty and knowledge and art of man, loftier than 
the notion of their immortal continuance and activity? 
Oh, no ! The degradation of thought is on the side of 
those who, in withering the individual for the race, anni- 
hilate God and Immortality, and finally wither forever 
the race. Look to the end : for what have they sacri- 
ficed their individuality? They have sacrificed it for 
the sake of a humanity which, individually and collec- 
tively, ends in the ridiculous and shameful tragedy of 
universal annihilation. 

It is a faith inconceivably dull and hopeless and sor- 
rowful ; and looking on it all, on all the tendencies which 
war against individual being and against the strong and 
creative sense of it which is active in man, we turn with 
intense pleasure and faith to the revelation by Christ of 
our vivid and continuous personality. 

And we need not be downcast about it, as if all these 
tendencies could damage it, nor need we think that man 
will lose, this precious truth. Art and Christianity both 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 255 



support it. Men who love art will always develop them- 
selves just as they please, and will, if philosophy or 
society attempt to limit their lives by rule, rebel against 
them both ; and, if science attempt to prove that they 
love or enjoy beauty or create it in a mechanical way or 
because they cannot help it, laugh at and desjnse sci- 
ence. To them there will always be a large part of their 
humanity, and that in their minds the highest, which has 
nothing to do with knowledge, and which transcends the 
understanding, and thinks its powers and its work com- 
monplace. 

Men who love God, and who feel that he loves them, 
who know that a direct personal relation is established 
between him and them, and that they are living beings 
forever, will equally and still more strongly resist the 
tendencies of which I speak. Religion, when it means 
the personal tie between a good Father who loves and 
a child whom he is educating, will always make indi- 
vidual men. Once a man feels, " I am myself God's, and 
he speaks and works in me and through me," he has that 
within him which forces him to make himself himself, 
which saves him from ever losing his personality or be- 
lieving in any theory which directly, or by implication, 
puts it aside. Christianity is the saving of the individ- 
uality of man ; and it is the thing best worth saving, not 
only for the man himself, but for the whole race. Yes, 
for the sake of the whole, it is the best thing. The true 
good of the whole does not consist in the repression, but 
in the strengthening of the individual. The true life of 
the whole does not consist in the dying of the parts, but 
in the intensity of the life of each part. The true growth 
of the race does not consist in the sacrifice of the parts 



256 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



when they have grown for sixty years, but in their end- 
less continuance in growth. 

Nor is it less true that the Christian declaration of 
individuality is a stronger basis of union among men 
for mutual good than the sacrifice or the suicide of in- 
dividuality. The true basis of union is not the union 
of dying men in a dying whole, but the union of living 
men in a living God. The true basis of mutual love is 
not the union of men who die daily for others who die 
also, but the union of all men to promote the loving life 
of all in God. The highest motive for love of our fellow- 
men and for universal love is found in the truth that we 
all love the same Father, and are all his children. That 
is the true and unconquerable ground of the brother- 
hood of humanity; and, while it creates infinite self-sacri- 
fice, it retains individual life and the eternal growth of 
personality. 

To hold it, to live by it, is not at least dull. Dull, 
do I say? It transfigures the world, and makes glorious 
our own life and all the lives of men. No one who 
believes it feels himself a machine: he feels the living 
God within him. No one can hold it, and yield to the 
dull monotony of society, or bend himself in stupid 
compliance to the rules of life the world lays down: 
he who lives by it laughs at the knowledge which pro- 
nounces his feelings necessary or his thoughts automatic. 
He knows better. Nothing will convince him that he is 
a congeries of atoms; nothing will prove to him that 
he is only matter ; nothing will make him think that he 
is going to die. All that he has thought and felt and 
learned and done, out of which his personality has been 
made, will be a part of him for ever, and bring forth 



THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 257 



new fruit in a new life. All his interests will remain, 
only they will grow more intense as his life develops ; 
and they will grow more intense, not in a selfish indi- 
viduality, but in one which will realize itself in losing 
self-consciousness, in living in all things, in eternal loving, 
and in the joy of loving. 

And what he believes for himself, he believes for all. 
He sees all men, like himself, as living persons, growing, 
acting, thinking, rejoicing, and united forever into one 
vast and loving humanity. For through the infinite 
varieties of personalities which secure progress there 
runs one mighty spirit, the united spirit of a common 
love to Him, their Father, in whom they live and move 
and have their being, who sought them wandering on 
earth, who would not lose one of them, and who now has 
made them lie down in green pastures, and led them 
beside still waters, — one flock and one Shepherd. 



IMMOETALITT.-I. 



1871. 

" For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live unto 
him." — Luke xx., 38. 

There is a common reason for the perverse denial of 
immortality. It is that man, when living solely for this 
I world, cannot believe in a world to come. He who is 
blind has no conception of the stars. He who is with- 
out passion cannot believe in enthusiasm. He who lives 
for himself cannot believe in self-devotion. 

And he who is living a base life cannot believe in a 
noble one. If his soul is plunged in the sensual, he can- 
not realize the spiritual. When his whole energies are 
given to this world, he cannot conceive or possess the 
world to come. There are, then, thousands of men 
calling themselves Christians, to whom immortal life 
is merely a name, to whom their little life is indeed 
"rounded with a sleep." 

Practically, they disbelieve in immortality. They may 
even inwardly go further, and deny it to themselves, 
should the question intrude upon their pleasure. But 
they do not deny it before the world. Something holds 
them back from boasting of their unbelief, — a conscious- 
ness that they have thrown aside a noble thing, a regret 



IMMORTALITY. 



259 



which will steal in, that now they can no longer aspire 
beyond their present life. Unable to realize immortality 
themselves, they yet shrink from an open denial of it 
with a sense of shame and degradation. But, still more, 
it becomes & dreadful thing to them, if they have any 
sensitive reverence left for the sorrow of mankind, to 
throw doubt upon this doctrine. If true, it is so pre- 
cious that it seems the race might bear any suffering, 
provided it was its fate at last. If it is only held to be 
false, and not proved false, a man may well doubt 
whether, on his own judgment alone, he should proclaim 
that he holds it false. There is a devotion to one's own 
truthfulness, which is, in certain circumstances, intoler- 
able cruelty to others ; and, in spiritual matters, where 
proof has not been attained, unless we clearly feel that 
to disclose our opinion is good for man, we are only 
Pharisees anxious to placard our honesty, when we 
loudly proclaim our negations in public or in private. 
Truthfulness without charity is a vice and not a virtue, 
as love without truthfulness to moral right becomes 
idolatry. 

And men in general have felt this, and when they dis- 
believed in immortality have held their tongue. 

Moreover, they have refrained, because they insensibly 
felt that the denial of immortality is practically atheism. 
Clinging still to the notion of a God, they connect with 
him their ideas of right and wrong. He is their source, 
and he allots their sanctions. But no one can long con- 
tinue to believe in and to love a God who is assumed to 
give us these ideas, and then so forgets all about his gift 
and his creature as to plunge obedience and disobedience 
into the same nothingness ; or who, by wilfully annexing 



260 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



annihilation to all human lives alike, proclaims that in 
his eyes Tiberius, rotting to a shameless death in Caprea, 
is on the same level with the Saviour, dying on Calvary 
for the Truth. One must feel that such a God would be 
wicked. He Avould deny that very morality which we 
imagine he has implanted in us. We should be obliged 
to deny his existence, in order to retain our morality. 
To disbelieve in immortality is to disbelieve in God: 
with the fall of the one, falls the other. 

And this also men have felt, and I know no instance 

J where the denial of immortality has not led directly to 
atheism. Men did not like to realize, by putting their 
denial of immortality into speech, that they did not 
practically believe in God at all. 

But these motives have now ceased to operate, at least 

| to the same extent. Matters have taken a new phase. 
Immortality is boldly or quietly denied, not only by im- 
pure and selfish men, but by men of culture and of a 
high morality. It is accompanied, as it must necessarily 
be, by latent or overt atheism, as a cause or a result of 
the denial. 

What are the particular causes of this denial at pres- 
, ent ? One is the prevalence of certain theological views 
which, once largely accepted, are now felt to be repug- 
nant to the moral sense. Good men, some among the 
best and holiest of the race, have held these views, and 
lived and died by them. And it is a strong proof that 
theological opinions have no necessary connection with 
goodness that these men have been so good. It proves 
also that we cannot judge the morality of one time, so 
far as it relates to the morality of opinions, by the mo- 
rality of another time. For few doubted then of the 



IMMORTALITY. 



261 



accordance of these opinions with moral right; and now 
many persons distinctly, and it seems to me with truth, 
reject them as immoral. 

Among these, the first is the conception of God. The 
conception of God's nature which has been laid before 
us for many years has brought many men at last to turn 
away from it with dismay and pain. They feel that the 
morality of the pulpit on this matter lags behind the 
moral feeling of society. God has been represented, 
they think, and I think with them, as selfish, as seeking 
his own glory at the expense of his creatures' welfare, as 
jealous, as arbitrary, as indulging in favoritism, as con- 
demning all for the sake of one, as insisting on forms of 
temporary importance and binding them forever on the 
conscience, as ruining men for mistakes in doctrine, as 
claiming a blind submission of the conscience and the 
intellect, as vindictive, as the resolute torturer of the 
greater J} art of the human race by an everlasting pun- 
ishment which presupposes everlasting evil; as, in one 
word, anything rather than the Father revealed in Jesus 
Christ. Much of this teaching remains still, though it is 
presented under a veil by which its coarser outlines are 
modified. It is accepted by many who either do not 
possess a strong and individual sense of morality, or who 
do not think or prefer not to think on the matter, lest 
they should shake the fabric of their easy faith or spoil 
their religious sentiment. But those who do, and whose 
moral feeling of right and wrong is sane and strong, 
turn away revolted from a God of this character, believe 
that to be immortally connected with him would be 
degradation, even the very horror of hell. 

But not having been taught any other God, and being, 



262 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



to a certain degree, culj^ably lazy about examining into 
the teaching of Christianity for themselves, they fall 
back on their last resource, and disbelieve in immor- 
tality. "It is better to perish forever than to be the 
slave of such a ruler. We deny his existence, and we 
deny the immortality he is said to promise. But, at the 
same time, we will be true to our sense of right and 
wrong ; we will do what we can to help the race ; we 
will have our immortality in the memories of the future, 
or in the ' Being of Humanity ' : but, as for ourselves, 
let us cease, for we could not live with the Being who 
has been described to us." 

Now, I believe this to be, and no one need mistake my 
meaning, a really healthy denial of immortality, for it is 
founded on the denial of a false God. And so far as it 
is founded on the assertion of a true morality, so far it 
is, though these men do not confess it as such, the asser- 
tion of the true God. The God who has been preached 
to men of late has now become to us an idol, that is, a 
conception of God lower than we ought to frame ; and 
a revolt against that conception is not in reality a revolt 
against God, it is a protest against idolatry. I sympa- 
thize strongly, then, with that part of the infidel effort 
which is directed against these immoral views of God's 
character, though I am pained by the manner in which 
the attack is conducted ; and it is my hope that the 
attack will lead our theologians to bring their teaching 
up to the level of the common moral feeling on this sub- 
ject, and to reveal God as the Father of men in all the 
profound meaning of that term. The belief in immor- 
tality will then return, for the love of God will return to 
men. For it is impossible for any man to clearly see and 



BOIOETALITY. 



263 



believe in the Father as revealed in Christ, and not pas- 
sionately desire to draw nearer and nearer to him for- 
ever, and not feel that he must live and continue to live 
forever. Therefore, in order to restore to men such as 
I have described a belief in immortality, we must restore 
to them a true conception of God. This is, this ought 
to be, the main work of the preachers and teachers of 
this time. For as long as the morality of the pulpit I 
hangs behind the morality of religious-minded men, ! 
those religious-minded men will be infidels. 

Again, another reason for the prevalent disbelief in 
immortality is the selfish theory of religious life. That I 
theory has almost died away among religious teachers, 
but the reaction against it still continues. We have 
given it up, but it is still imputed to us by our infidel 
opponents. 

It is said that we are to do good, in order to be re- 
warded; and to avoid evil, lest we should be punished. 
In this doctrine, badly stated as it has been, there is 
nothing which appeals to the nobler feelings of man. 
Selfish gratification and selfish fear are alone addressed. 
It is a direct appeal to that part of our being which is 
the meanest, as if that were the part which could most 
readily accept religion. It connects us to God by bonds 
of self-interest, as a servant to a patron, not by bonds of 
love, as a child to a father. 

Against this theory many rose in revolt, declaring that 
according to it the desire of immortal life was a selfish 
desire, and proposing, as an escape from this selfishness, 
that men should live a noble life without hopes for the 
future. They set this forth as the highest form of self- 
sacrifice. " Live," they said, " doing good, without hope 



264 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



of reward, only for the sake of good ; hating and fighting 
with evil, because evil is degradation, not because it is 
punished. You cannot do this, if you accept the Chris- 
tian doctrine of immortal life. For it nourishes selfish- 
ness. It locks a man up in care for his own safety. On 
the highest religious grounds, we deny the doctrine of 
immortality as prejudicial to a noble and pious life." 

And, if that were really the Christian doctrine, they 
would do well in denying it, and we might be driven 
to accept their fine-sounding theory of self-sacrifice. 

But we meet it, first, by a blunt contradiction of the 
false representation of Christianity, from which it has 
sprung as a reaction. Christianity says precisely what 
these men say, only not in so abstract a manner. It 
asks us to do good, not for the sake of abstract good, but 
for the sake of being like to God, the personal goodness. 
That is not a selfish doctrine, nor does it lead to selfish- 
ness. It urges us to avoid evil, lest we should become 
unlike God, in whose image we are, and whose temple 
we become. That is not a selfish motive. It takes us 
out of self, and makes our life consist in living in God, 
and, because he lives in all the race, in living through 
him in the interests and lives of all our brother-men. 
That is not a selfish doctrine. Its reward is not a selfish 
reward: it is the reward of being made unselfish, be- 
cause made like to God. "Your reward," said Christ, 
"shall be great, for ye shall be the children of your 
Father " ; that is, resembling your Father in character. 

Nor does Christianity appeal to fear of punishment, 
but to the feeling of love. It does not say menacingly, 
"Thou shalt not kill, or steal, or be an idolater" : it says, 
"Love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and thy 



IMMORTALITY. 



265 



neighbor as thyself," for then, since thou lovest, thou 
canst not injure thy neighbor, or sin against God. It 
rejects fear, as having torment, as belonging to a spirit 
of bondage, not a spirit of life. It appeals throughout 
to self-sacrifice, self-devotion. It asks us to live by all 
that is noblest in us, to walk worthy of our high voca- 
tion, — likeness to Christ, who died for men. It does 
not proclaim the selfish doctrine on which this denial of 
immortality is founded. 

But it is plain that it does declare rewards and punish- 
ments ; and an objector may say that, even on the sup- 
position that Christianity does not really apjDeal to the 
selfish feeling, yet the introduction of the element of 
rewards has in itself a tendency to produce selfish feeling. 

Certainly, we answer, if the rewards are material, if I 
they belong in any way to the selfish part of our nature. [ 
But if they have nothing to do with that, but with that 
part of our being which lives by the denial of self and 
the practice of self-devotion, if they are purely spiritual 
rewards, to long after them is not selfish, but the high 
duty of the soul. God says, "Do good, and you are 
rewarded." How? By an increased power of doing 
good. Is it selfish to desire that ? God says, " Love me, 
love your brother-men with all your heart, and you shall 
be rewarded." How? By deeper capability of loving. 
Is it selfish to desire that? The true statement of the 
doctrine of rewards at once dissipates this absurd accu- 
sation of selfishness. 

To look forward to this increase of the spiritual life, 
to this daily growth of unselfishness, and to live and act 
in the hope of that and for its sake, — it is ridiculous to 
call that a selfish theory. To do good, and to think of 



266 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



the reward of being loved by God and of becoming more 
like to God, is no more a selfish life than to spend one's 
whole life for one's country, and to rejoice in the idea of 
being loved by one's country, and becoming more worthy 
of her love, is selfish for the high-hearted soldier. A life 
of love, lived in the hope of the reward of becoming 
more capable of love, does not encourage in the heart a 
single germ of selfishness. 

And as to immortal life itself, if you choose to sepa- 
rate it for a moment from these spiritual qualities of 
love and purity and truth (which in us are immortal life), 
the desire of life, keener, purer, more abounding, cannot 
be selfish; for it is a natural appetite of the human 
spirit. 

Now, the lawful gratification of appetite is not selfish. 
No one is so absurd as to say that the desire of food or 
drink when we are hungry or thirsty, for the sake of 
relieving these appetites, is a selfish desire. No one says 
that the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowing is 
a selfish desire. It is a noble appetite of the intellect. 
Yet here, when we get into the realm of the spirit of 
man, we are told that the desire of immortal life for the 
sake of life, and that acting for the purpose of being a 
partaker of that life, is selfish, and encourages selfish- 
ness. It is a greater absurdity than the others. Desire 
of life is the most natural appetite of the spirit, and we 
are in desperate peril of becoming truly selfish when we 
crush it, or caricature it, or attempt to live without it. 

Indeed, that is often the result. I do not speak now 
of those who replace the doctrine of personal immor- 
tality by the mystical and unpractical notion of an 
immortality in the race, for these at least allow of the 



EVDIOETALITY. 



267 



existence of a longing and passion for immortality, of 
which they are bonncl to take notice ; nor of those who 
frankly, on scientific grounds, avow that they do not 
believe in the existence of a spirit in man apart from his 
mortal frame, but of those who quietly, on the fantastic 
ground of the selfishness of this passion, deprive the 
race of one of the mighty hopes which make us men. 

On the whole, mankind resents this, and resents it 
justly. It separates itself from these men who have 
separated themselves from the common longing. They 
feel their isolation, and retire from the world. Or they 
become angry with the world, and mock and scorn its 
aspirations. Or they seclude themselves and their theory 
in Pharisaic dignity, and thank Fate that they are not 
as other men are, blinded by superstition, but seated 
aloft in the clear light of unapproachable self-sacrifice, 
the martyrs of a grand idea. 

The end of it all is that they become as self-involved 
as the Simeon Stylites of the poet, as self-righteous, and 
as self-conceited. Aiming at the utter denial of self, 
they arrive at the utter assertion of self. 

And this result follows, because the self-sacrifice put 
forward by these theorists is not self-sacrifice at all, but 
the immolation of the best and most aspiring part of our 
nature. They give up what is good, and call it self- 
sacrifice. It is an inversion of the truth, for self-sacrifice 
is surrendering what is wrong, or pleasurable, for the 
sake of good to others. There are certain necessary 
elements in an act of true self-sacrifice. It must be in 
itself a moral act, and distinctly felt as such by the actor, 
else one throws the halo of self-surrender over evil : it 
must not be merely instinctive, but done with a rational 



268 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



belief that it will produce good ; and the doer of it must 
not give ujd or weaken any element in his nature, the 
existence and strong existence of which, even in a single 
individual, is of importance for the ju'ogress of the race. 
It is not self-sacrifice to crucify a high desire for the 
sake of attaining an ideal. It is not self-sacrifice to give 
up what is true for the sake of being more true. That 
is as absurd as giving up one friend for the sake of being 
a more perfect friend to another. You do not gain, but 
lose so much of j>ower of friendship. And those who 
surrender the hope of immortal life, for the sake of being 
freed from all thought of self, do not gain the self-sacri- 
ficing heart : they only take away one of the motive- 
powers of self-sacrifice. 

On the whole, we want clearer notions of self-sacrifice. 
There are some things we have no right to give up. It 
is not self-sacrifice to surrender our conscience, though 
we might save a whole nation by doing so. It is not 
self-sacrifice to be false to our own soul, for the sake of 
those we love, as the martyr would have been, had he 
worshipped Jupiter, because his father and mother wept 
at his feet, and were left to ruin by his death. It is not 
self-sacrifice to commit suicide, as in some novels, for the 
sake of the happiness of others. It is not self-sacrifice 
to marry one who loves you, because you do not wish 
him or her to suffer, when you do not love in return : it 
is self-destruction. It is not self-sacrifice to cast aside 
immortality, that it may not vitiate by a taint of self 
your doing good. It is spiritual suicide, — nay, more, 
there is a hidden selfishness in it ; for he who does this 
is endeavoring to secure his own ideal at the expense of 
the race of men whom he deprives of the hope which 



IMMORTALITY. 



269 



more than all else has cheered and strengthened them in 
the battle against evil. It is selfish to wilfully shut our 
eyes to this, that we may indulge a fancy of our own. 

For the sake of right reason, if not for the sake of 
God, do not let yourself be tricked out of your belief in 
immortality by a subtile seeming good, by an appeal to a 
false idea of self-sacrifice. First cast aside the theology 
which has given rise to this twisted notion of self-sacri- 
fice, and then with a clear judgment you will recognize 
that the true self-sacrifice is not incompatible with the 
reward of that immortal life which is in itself nothing 
less than the life of self-sacrifice. Your smile will then 
be a quiet smile, when men tell you to give up longing 
for immortality because it is a selfish ground of action. 
What, you will say, is it selfish to hope to be forever 
unselfish? Is it selfish to desire to be at one with the life 
of Him who finds his life in giving himself away? Is it 
selfish to aspire to that fuller life which is found in living 
in the lives of others by watchful love of them ? These 
are my rewards, and every one of them ministers to and 
secures unselfishness. 

Lastly, there is another reason for the denial of im- 
mortality, which arises from theological teaching. It is 
the extremely dull and limited notions of the future 
life. TVe have too much transferred to our northern 
Christianity and our active existence of thought the 
Oriental conceptions of heaven drawn from the book of 
the Revelation. We have taken them literally instead 
of endeavoring to win the spiritual thoughts of which 
these descriptions are but the form. And, literally taken, 
they are wholly unsuitable to our Teutonic nature. They 
make the future life seem to our minds a lazy dreamy 
existence, in which all that is quickest and most vital in 



270 



FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 



us would stagnate, in which all that makes life interest- 
ing, dramatic, active, would perish. It is not needless 
to notice this. For it is astonishing how, even among 
men who should have known better, the early childish 
conceptions of heaven remain as realities. I have met 
active-minded working-people and cultivated men who 
looked forward with dislike to death, because they 
dreaded the dulness of the next world. Till we have a 
higher, more human conception of the future life than 
that usually given, we shall not restore to society a joy- 
ful belief in immortality. Our theology wants a picture 
of the world to come, fitted to meet a larger and a 
worthier ideal of humanity. If we wish to awake 
interest in the future life, we must add to the merely 
spiritual ideas of uncultivated teachers others which 
will minister food to the imagination, the intellect, the 
social, and national instincts of man; nay, more, if we 
believe in the resurrection of the body, others which 
minister to the delight of the purified senses. 

We need only go back to the revelation of Christ to 
gain the true ground of this wider conception. He 
revealed God as each man's Father. Now, the highest 
work of a father is education, and the end of God's edu- 
cation of man is the finished and harmonious develop- 
ment of all his powers. If in the future life our intellect 
or imagination is left undeveloped, it is not education, 
and we cannot conceive of a perfect fatherhood. If all 
our powers have not there their work and their oppor- 
tunities of expansion, the full idea of fatherhood is lost. 
If any of our true work here on earth is fruitless work, 
and does not enable us to produce tenfold results in a 
future life, no matter what that work may be, work of 
the artist, historian, politician, merchant, then the true 



IMMORTALITY. 



271 



conception of education, and therefore of God's father- 
hood, is lost. 

No, brethren, we rest on this: "I go to prepare a place 
for you." A place is prepared for each one of us; a 
place fitted to our distinct character ; a separate work 
fitted to develop that character into perfection, and in 
the doing of which we shall have the continual delight 
of feeling that we are growing, — a place not only for us, 
but for all our peculiar powers. Our ideals shall become 
more beautiful, and minister continually to fresh aspira- 
tion, so that stagnation will be impossible. Feelings for 
which we found no food here shall there be satisfied 
with work, and exercised by action into exquisite per- 
fection. Faint possibilities of our nature, which came 
and went before us here like swallows on the wing, 
shall there be grasped and made realities. The outlines 
of life shall be filled up, the rough statue of life shall be 
finished. We shall be not only spiritual men, but men 
complete in Christ, the perfect flower of humanity. 

And this shall be in a father's home, where all the 
dearest dreams of home-life shall find their happy ful- 
filment ; in a perfect society, where all the charming 
interchange of thought, and giving and receiving of each 
other's good, which make our best happiness on earth, 
shall be easier, freer, purer, more intimate, more spirit- 
ual, more intellectual; and, lastly, in a perfect polity, 
" fellow-citizens with the saints," where all the interests 
of large national life shall find room and opportunities 
for development ; and, binding all together, the omni- 
present Spirit of love, goodness, truth, and life, whom 
we call God, and whom we know in Jesus Christ, shall 
abide in us, and we in him, "for he is not a God of 
the dead, but of the living ; for all live unto him." 



IMMOBTALITY.-II. 



1871. 

" For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live 
unto him." — Luke xx., 38. 

It is remarkable that the theological questions which 
are now most widely spoken of are no longer those 
which presuppose a general confession of Christianit}', 
but other and deeper questions altogether, — questions 
the very discussion of which shows how strongly the 
foundations of the religious world are moved. It is 
now frequently asked whether there be a God or not, 
whether immortality be not a mere idol of the imagi- 
nation. It is plain, when society has got down to these 
root questions, that modern theology in its past form 
has no longer the power to do its work, otherwise these 
things would be axioms. It is plain that, if Christianity 
is to keep its ground, it must go through a revolution, 
and present itself in a new form to the minds of men. 

It is the characteristic excellence of Christianity that 
it is able to do this. For, with regard to his own relig- 
ion, the saying of Christ remains forever true, that say- 
ing which declares the continued progress of revelation, 
— "I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot 
bear them now." 



IMMORTALITY. 



273 



But when the time draws near for the growth of 
Christian thought around a new idea, and for the re- 
generation of Christian practice by the life which flows 
from the fresh thought, the change is heralded by the 
appearance, sometimes in infidel teaching, sometimes in 
isolated religious teachers, of scattered and disconnected 
truths, which do not naturally belong to the old form of 
religion, or which are set up in opposition to it. Being 
half-truths or isolated truths, they point forward to a 
complete form which shall supplement and include them. 
At the present day, many of the new truths, or rather of 
the extensions of the old truths, which Christianity will 
have to absorb, are to be found in infidel teaching, com- 
bined with a rejection of immortality and of the being 
of a God. We shall search for those truths to-day, and 
try to show that without the doctrine of immortality 
they have no lasting value, but that in union with it 
they are of real importance, and ought to be claimed for 
Christianity. 

But first let us examine for a moment what is taking 
place at present with regard to Christian and infidel 
teaching. 

During the time when an old form of Christian 
thought is slowly passing away, having exhausted all it 
had to give, it repeats again and again with the gar- 
rulity of old age the phrases which in its youth were the 
exj^ressions of living thought and feeling. They fitted 
then the wants of men, and they were the means by 
which religious life advanced and religious truth devel- 
oped. But, being naturally cast into a fixed intellectual 
system, they remained behind the movement they be- 
gan : they made men grow, but men outgrew them, for 



274 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



systems become old, but mankind is always young. It 
follows then, almost of necessity, that, when a certain 
point in this progress is reached, there will be a strong 
reaction against the old form of Christianity, and the 
reaction will contain the assertion of that which is want- 
ing in the dying phase, and a protest against its weak- 
ness. Both the assertion and the protest will often be 
combined with infidel teaching ; for there will be many 
who, seeing these garments of Christianity rotting away, 
and hearing them declared to be Christianity itself, will 
believe the declaration, and attack not only the gar- 
ments, but the living spirit itself which is waiting to be 
reclothed. The infidel teaching on religious subjects will 
then consist of two parts, a negative and a positive part. 
The negative will deny or ignore all Christian truth as 
then taught : the ])ositive will assert some ideas neces- 
sary for the present time, and answering to some of its 
religious wants. It is the business of Christian teachers, 
while setting aside the negations, to claim as their own 
those positive ideas which, though developed in a for- 
eign soil, are yet derived from Christian seeds. They 
will say, " We have learned from our enemies : they have 
told us what the age desires. In answer to that desire, 
they have unwittingly fallen back upon Christian ideas 
and expanded them, led unconsciously thereto by the 
ever-working spirit of God. Those expansions are ours: 
we did not see them before, but we claim them now." 
If we do that, the infidelity of the infidel — that is, his 
negations — will slowly share the fate of all negations ; 
and the scattered truths he teaches, taken into Chris- 
tianity, find in it their vital union with all its past, and 
form stepping-stones for its future growth. 



IMMORTALITY. 



275 



This is the general sketch of the movement in which 
we are now involved. We are at that point in it in 
which we are beginning to recognize that the infidel is 
teaching a few truths which naturally belong to Chris- 
tianity. But we have not yet fully assimilated those 
truths, or established their connection with those we 
possess. Not till that is done will our wider form of 
Christian thought be completed. 

Let us take the two main forms of infidelity which pre- 
vail, — secularism and Comtism, — the first widely spread 
among the Avorking-classes ; the second — the religion of 
positivism, to call it by its other name — held by a small 
number of the cultivated class. 

Both of these hold in them ideas which ought to be 
ours. It is said that these ideas are foreign to Chris- 
tianity. On the contrary, I believe that they are the 
children of Christianity born in an alien land, and more- 
over that they fit more harmoniously into the Christian 
system than into the system with which they are now 
united. 

Of the coarse, brutal secularism, which does nothing 
but deny and bluster, I have nothing to say ; but there 
is another form of it, which does not so much deny as 
say : " We do not know : there may be another life to 
come, there may be a God, but we cannot prove these 
things. They are wrapped in mystery: they leave us 
in the mystery. God, if there be a God, gives no an- 
swer to us. All the feelings which we are asked to 
feel about him, all the hopes and fears which cluster 
round the doctrine of immortality, only hinder our prac- 
tical work, make us think of ourselves, and not of our 
duty : nay, more, they do harm ; for more suffering and 



276 



FAITH AND FBEEDOM. 



evil have come upon the race, more cruelty and more 
hindrances to progress have arisen from these notions 
than from any others. We will put them utterly aside, 
and act by faith in other ideas." 

This is their denial, and even from this we may learn 
much. For the God the conscientious secularist denies 
is the God of whom we spoke last Sunday,— a God of 
arbitrary will, who makes salvation depend on assent 
to certain systems of theology, and men responsible for 
sins committed before they were born ; who dooms the 
greater part of the race to eternal wickedness. And the 
immortality he does not care for is an immortality based 
on the selfish doctrine of which we also spoke, which by 
working on the fears and greed of men produces perse- 
cution in public and continual brooding on self in pri- 
vate; above all, which destroys unconscious aspiration. 
Looking at this, we learn our faults. We are driven back 
to that conception of a Father which Christ revealed. 
We are taught to preach a loftier view of the nature of 
immortal life. We turn and say to the secularist, " The 
God whom you reject, we reject : the immortality you 
deny, we deny also." 

But we may learn much more from what he asserts 
as his religion. He believes that nature contains all 
things necessary for the guidance of mankind ; that duty 
consists in a steadfast pursuit, according to the laws of 
nature, of results tending to the happiness of the race; 
and that in doing that duty he becomes happy. His 
God is duty, his Bible is nature, his heaven is in the 
happiness of man and the progress of mankind to per- 
fection. His sin is in violating natural laws, because 
such a violation is sure to bring evil on men. 



IMMORTALITY. 



277 



The two main ideas running through this we ought to 
learn to make more prominent in Christianity, the idea 
that man has a higher duty to mankind than to himself, 
the idea of the progress of the race to perfection. The 
first is distinctly contained in the whole spirit of the life 
of Christ, the second in the Christian conception of 
God's Fatherhood. But there is no doubt that our 
Christianity has not sufficiently dwelt on these thoughts, 
and that the Christianity of the future must absorb 
them. We accept then, with thankfulness, this teach- 
ing from without ; but we say that to fulfil it in action, 
and to bring it home to the hearts and lives of men, 
there must be added to it the Christian ideas of God and 
of immortality. The absence of these deprives the sec- 
ularist of any certain ground for that reverence for 
human nature and for that faith in ultimate perfection 
without which there can be no joyous self-sacrifice for 
man, no unfaltering work for his progress. Their ab- 
sence deprives him of the mighty impulse which arises 
from a profound love for an all-loving person, and re- 
places it by the weaker impulse which is born of love to 
an abstraction called duty, or to a " humanity " which is 
always disappointing the love which is lavished on it, 
till our love, feeding on imj^erfection, becomes itself en- 
feebled or corrupt. Their absence dejmves him of the 
idea which more than all others makes a religious society 
coherent, that all its members are held together by the 
indwelling in each, and in the whole, of one personal 
spirit of good ; of the idea which makes work for human 
progress persistent, that all work done here is carried to 
perfection in a kindlier world, not only in the everlasting 
life of each worker, but in the mighty whole of a human 



278 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



race destined to slowly form itself, through the undying 
labor of each and all in God, into the full-grown man. 
And, finally, their absence deprives him of any large 
power of appeal to those deep-seated feelings of awe, 
mystery, and adoration, which are drawn out in men by 
the idea of God ; and which are, when linked to the in- 
spiration which flows from the love of a perfect man, 
the source of that enthusiasm which supports and con- 
tinues a religion. 

Practically, then, we should expect a priori that sec- 
ularism, on account of its negation of God and immor- 
tality, could not float its noble ideas. And this is really 
the fact : it has had many followers, but the greater 
number do not remain in it ; they change out of it into 
many Christian sects, or they pass from entire unbelief 
into credulity. Some are the victims of remote and 
strange phases of fanaticism : others, like Robert Owen, 
end in the opposite extreme of " spiritualism." 

Nor have the societies or sects of secularism any co- 
herence : none of them can keep up a ];>ermanent organi- 
zation, and their quarrels are as bitter as they say that 
those of Christians are. The very best among them pass 
through life doing their duty to the last, but in a kind 
of mournful hopelessness, their heart unsatisfied, though 
their intellect may be at rest ; for there is, dee}} down in 
their minds, the painful suspicion that clinging to nega- 
tions may after all be itself as blind a superstition as any 
of those which they attack. 

To sum up all, there are a few ideas in secularism 
which owe their origin to the insensible growth of the 
ideas of Christ among men. These ideas are in advance 
of the accepted Christianity of this day, but they are 



IMMORTALITY. 



279 



inoperative in secularism. When we take them into 
connection with the belief in God and immortality, they 
will become operative, but they will modify the present 
form of Christianity. 

Secondly, we consider the religion of positivism in the 
same light. It maintains, though in a different and 
more cultured form, the same views on these points as 
secularism. But it avoids negations for the most part, 
and confines itself to saying that Christianity has noth- 
ing more to give to man; that its good influence is 
exhausted for the western nations. In it, the Christian 
doctrine of God and immortality entirely disappears. In 
spite of this, and far more than secularism, it has drunk 
deep of the spirit of Christianity : most of its doctrines 
may be directly inferred from the teaching of Christ 
and the Apostles, and in fact are unconsciously derived 
from it. Only it is to be said that the accredited Chris- 
tianity of the day has not yet arrived at these expan- 
sions of Christian ideas, that, so far, the followers of 
Comte's religion are in front of us, and that we ought, 
in spite of the curious and infidel surrounding of these 
new thoughts, to claim them as by right our own and 
embody them in Christianity. 

The future Christianity will have to take into itself 
such doctrines as social and international self-sacrifice, 
which is a direct and logical expansion of the Christian 
doctrine of self-sacrifice. It is surprising, if anything 
is surprising, that we have not done this already ; that 
in our ptdpits we only speak of the self-sacrifice of one 
person for another, and almost nothing of the duty of 
the citizen to sacrifice himself for his parish, for social 



280 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



ends, for the State ; of the duty of nations to sacrifice 
their own interests for the sake of the community of 
nations, and of the duty of the community of nations to 
sacrifice much in the j>resent for the sake of the future 
welfare of the whole race. ISTor must we leave out 
other positivist doctrines, such as the necessity of giving 
to each of the human faculties their ajrpropriate work 
in connection with a large idea of religion, a doctrine 
contained, as I think, in Saint Paul's view of the relation 
of gifts and of distinct characters to the growth of the 
race in God, and of the working * of these differing gifts 
by a divine spirit for that purpose ; nor yet that other 
doctrine of the sanctification of all human effort to the 
good of man, so that social feeling may be victorious 
over self-love, which is in fact the redeclaration, in a 
wider form than we declare it, of the whole aim and 
spirit of Christ's life ; nor yet that other doctrine of the 
union of science, art, and morality into an harmonious 
whole, under the regenerating influence of the worship 
of humanity, — a conception which we shall take, and 
only change by rej^lacing the worship of humanity by 
the worship of the. Christ as the representative and 
concentration into an ideal man of the whole race as it 
is in God ; nor yet, finally, that other idea of the race as 
one great Being ever living and moving on by the service 
of each to the use of the whole, which is, in truth, the 
idea of the race as "the full-grown man" laid down by 
Saint Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians, adding, how- 
ever, to this last thought that which gives it reality and 
concrete form, — the belief in One who is the federal 

*"A11 these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to 
every man severally as he will." 



IMMORTALITY. 



281 



Head of this great Being, because he is himself in per- 
fection that which the race is as yet imperfectly. These 
are the doctrines which we gladly receive as expansions 
of our Christianity, and by which we modify our present 
form of it. 

But we shall absorb them, retaining that which the 
religion of positivism leaves out as unnecessary, but 
without which, as we think, these new ideas die of star- 
vation, — the belief in the Being of a loving Father, and 
in the endless life of each and all. That there does exist 
in man the desire of adoring an all-embracing Being, 
and the desire of immortality, positivism, unlike secular- 
ism, is too wise to deny; and it attempts to provide for 
these two passions in its religion. Instead of God, it 
presents us with humanity conceived of as a vast organ- 
ism composed of all men and women who have lived for 
the sake of mankind. This is the Being we are to wor- 
ship, and of whom we ourselves are part : we devote our 
thoughts to the knowledge of her, our afflictions to her 
love, our actions to her service. To become, in the 
thoughts of men, at one with this Being whose life re- 
news itself throughout all time, and to be commemorated 
and loved by men to come, to have our immortality in 
the continued existence and affection of the race, — this 
is the reward and this the eternal life which this religion 
offers to our acceptance. 

Well, if such an object of worship and such an immor- 
tality satisfy the passions and longings, the existence of 
which the positivist confesses in others, it will be very 
strange. He allows that they do not satisfy men as at 
present constituted, that the old feelings must be driven 
out before the new gospel be received. But we are told 



282 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



that education from the positivist point of view will 
transfer the feelings now expended on God to this new 
Being, and that the aspirations which now cluster round 
immortality will have their satisfaction in the delight of 
having our work interwoven with the progress of man- 
kind. Against these assertions, one can only appeal to 
time for a full reply. But it does seem true that men, if 
they worship, wish to worship what is perfect and abso- 
lute, and that the worship of an imperfect and growing 
humanity cannot ever satisfy their wish. And it also 
seems true that men, if they worship, wish to worship 
one whom they can distinctly conceive as a person in 
relation with themselves, and in whom, as the ideal Man, 
each man can love his race. The Great-Being of the 
Comtist does not realize this wish. The organism of 
which he speaks is not distinct to thought, is not a 
person, is not capable of entering into se])arate relations 
of affection with individuals. The whole thing, while 
professing to be specially human, seems to me specially 
inhuman. Nor will men, I think, be satisfied to live 
only in the memory of those to come, and to exchange 
the promise of immortal life (growing fuller, wiser, more 
intense in work and enjoyment of growth, more individ- 
ual and yet less liable to self-absorption, every day) for 
the j)romise of annihilation, except so far as their influ- 
ence and acts remain in the continued progress of the 
race. They will say : " All you promise me I have 
already in Christianity, and the something more which 
you do not promise. The past and all its human story is 
far more living to me than it is to you. I belong in 
Christ (who has redeemed and is redeeming all men) to 
all the spirits who have been. I am a part, not of a 



IMMORTALITY. 



283 



'humanity,' all the back portions of which are dead, but 
of a mighty army of living men, who, though called dead 
to us, are yet united to us in spirit, and doing human 
work in God, in a world to which I am going. Nor do I 
only belong to the past and present of mankind : I belong 
in God, who holds eternity within himself, to all the 
future of mankind. Those yet unborn are living in him, 
and therefore bound to me. And all the beings of the 
human race, on earth and in heaven, are advancing 
together, — avast polity, under the education of the Lord 
and King, whose name is Eternal Love. Till you can 
bring your conception up to the level of that magnificent 
conception, we refuse to take it into serious considera- 
tion. It is a lower thought, and we cannot change gold 
against lead." 

We believe, then, in the eternal progress of the race 
in God, not only in the immortality of individuals, but in 
the immortality of mankind. It made men fairly object 
to immortality when it was held to secure to a few con- 
tinuous union with good, and to the many continuous 
union with evil. It is to this false and cruel view that 
we owe the spread and the strength of secularism. But 
day by day the doctrine of the eternity of evil is being 
driven into its native night before a higher view of the 
nature of God, and a nobler belief in him as the undying 
righteousness. We are beginning to understand what 
Christ meant when he said, " Other sheep I have, which 
are not of this fold : them also I must bring ; and there 
shall be one flock and one shepherd." It was a " must," 
an imperative duty which the Saviour felt; and he spoke 
in the name of God, who feels the same as a necessity of 
his relation to us. 



284 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



The act of creation lays on ns a duty. We bring a 
child into the world, and the absolute imperative of God 
is on us to feed, educate, and love to the end that to 
which we have given life. We do our best for the child, 
but we will suppose that all goes wrong. We expend 
our love upon him, he rejects it ; Ave punish, and he 
hardens under punishment and leaves us ; we go after 
him, and he refuses to return ; we give him up to himself 
for a time, and he grows worse, and dies impenitent. 
But, if we are of a true human nature, we cannot forget 
him. Our first thought in the other world is our erring 
son, and if we can, — -and I for one do not doubt it, — 
our one effort in the eternal life will be to find him out 
and redeem him to our heart by any sacrifice which love 
can prompt. And, even could love not move us, duty 
would call us to this righteous quest. We must bring 
our wanderer home. 

It is so, I firmly believe, with God and men. By the 
very act of creation, God has laid upon himself a neces- 
sity of redemption. We wander from him, and he pun- 
ishes us through his spiritual laws ; we reap that which 
we have sown ; we fill our belly with the husks which 
the swine eat. He lets us eat of the fruit of our own 
devices, the day of retribution comes, and our pleasures 
turn to gall, our irritated desires become our hell. 
Lower and lower still we sink, and suffering is hard on 
us ; for impenitent man must touch the abyss of God's 
chastising tenderness before pride and self be conquered 
into penitence. But God waits and works : " Them also 
I must bring," speaks the necessity which flows from his 
Fatherhood. All through our deepest ruin, God's victo- 
rious love is opposed to man's reluctant hatred and 



IMMOBTALITY. 



285 



despair, till at last they, being of the finite finite, and of 
the dead things of the universe dead, are shattered to 
pieces by persistent love ; and the child, come to himself, 
calls out from the depths of a divine misery, " I will 
arise, and go to my Father." Far off, his Father sees 
him, and in triumphant joy receives him : " This my son 
was dead, and is alive again; was lost, and is found." 
It will be thus within eternity, till, in the fulness of 
charity, there shall be at last one flock and one shepherd. 
Most tender and most true of images ! Contrast it, in 
its beauty, with the common notion of the future of the 
race, — that notion which has maddened men into athe- 
ism and hatred of immortality, — a small flock on which 
all the infinite love of the infinite goodness is outpoured, 
and beyond its fold a howling wilderness of lost and 
ruined souls, lost and ruined for ever and ever, and 
rained upon by the eternal fires of the everlasting anger 
of a vindictive God. It is not so : that is not our God, 
nor that our heaven, nor that the immortality for which 
we cry. God must bring all his creatures to himself. 
"There shall be one flock and one shepherd." 

As long as the horror of everlasting punishment, or, 
as it may be better expressed, of everlasting evil, is 
preached, secularism will keep alive. Rough-thinking 
men at this time of the world cannot stand Manichaeism ; 
and it is no wonder that they deny God, when one of the 
main things they are told is that God either keeps up 
evil forever in his universe, or is unable to put an end to 
it. Nor is it any wonder that they become unbelievers 
•in Christianity, when a doctrine is linked to Christianity 
which denies their moral instincts, and makes them look 
on God as the sovereign tyrant ; which forces them to 



286 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



consider the story of redemption as either a weak effort 
on the part of an incapable God, or a mockery by him 
of his creatures on the plea of a love which they see as 
scornful, and a justice which they declare to be favorit- 
ism. I prophesy, as this doctrine perishes, the resurrec- 
tion of the working-classes from secularism into faith in 
the Father of men. I foresee a brighter, more joyous, 
more natural Christianity, in the midst of which faith 
and hope shall abide, and love which never faileth. Fifty 
years hence, we shall all believe in the victorious power 
of goodness, and the test of Orthodoxy shall not be that 
which I once heard applied to a young clergyman, — "Sir, 
do you believe in the devil ? " It will be this : " Do you 
believe in God?" 

Again, the doctrine of immortality was fairly objected 
to, when it led men to dwell on their own salvation as 
the first thing, when it promoted the idea of individual- 
ism to the loss of the idea of association. To this 
tendency of the doctrine, we owe its rejection by the 
positivist religion ; for it injured one of the foremost 
doctrines of Comte, — that self-love must be systemati- 
cally subordinated to social and international sacrifice, 
that all men and nations ought to be bound together as 
one man. 

The tendency against which there has been this re- 
action is indeed contained in the Christian doctrine : it 
does dwell on and deepen individuality- But it was a 
shameful thing when men tore away this element of the 
doctrine from its brother element, isolated it, and turned 
it, as a half-truth, into a lie. For the doctrine was united 
on its other side to the frankest sacrifice of the indi- 
vidual to the whole; nay, it gave men to understand 



IMMORTALITY. 



287 



that, without the largest sacrifice, immortal life could 
not be attained. " TYTiosoever saveth his life shall lose 
it," said Christ; "and -whosoever loseth his life, the same 
shall save it." He himself v:as the Eternal Life, because 
he died for the whole world of men. "I could wish myself 
accursed from Christ," said Saint Paul, "for my brethren, 
my companions' sake." There was no base individual- 
ism in that noble s]3eech : to have the spirit which can 
say it is to have immortal life. 

Nor did Christianity in its relation to immortality 
shut out the element of association. Its original church 
Avas chosen from mankind for the purpose of bringing 
all mankind into it. The heathen world are spoken of 
as apart from it, but only as then apart from it: its 
object was to unite all nations into one, to bring the 
wildest and remotest within its realm. ISTo class was 
left out, no classes existed in its spiritual kingdom : all 
were children of God, brothers of one another; and 
this was their immortal life in the spiritual world, that 
they all lived in and for each other. The images used 
to describe the Christian idea of the Church were im- 
ages of association: a temple built of living stones; 
a human body, whose head was Christ, from whom " the 
whole body, fitly joined together, and compacted by that 
which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual 
working in the measure of every part, maketh increase 
of the body to the edifying of itself in love." That is 
not the doctrine of each man for himself, but of each 
for all. The same idea is more fully carried out in the 
First Epistle- to the Corinthians, chapter twelve. And I 
must here say that these Epistles are not to be taken as 
addressed to a close sect of believers : they were written 



288 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



to all the Corinthian Church, and through them to all 
mankind. "Nor were these words spoken to specially 
holy persons, but to the whole body of men, bad or 
good, in that Church, — to fanatics, to drunkards who 
scandalized the Supper of the Lord, to defenders of 
incest, to men fighting with one another and divided 
into religious sects, as well as to the righteous. He 
begins by speaking of the diversities of gifts, and of 
their use in the progressive education of the whole 
body, each ministering that which the other wanted. 
He goes on to say that " all have been baptized into one 
body, whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free " ; for there 
was no separation of nations or classes. The isolation of 
one from the rest is then condemned, for the body is not 
one member, but many ; nor can any member separate 
himself from the body, because he is not as another: 
"For if the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, 
I am not of the body, is it not therefore of the body?" 
Nor can any member say that he can live without the 
life of any other member : " The eye cannot say to the 
hand, I have no need of thee : nay, even those mem- 
bers of the body which we think to be less honorable, 
upon these we bestow more abundant honor, and our 
uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For 
our comely parts have no need ; but God hath tempered 
the body together, having given more abundant honor 
to that part which lacked, that there should be no 
schism in the body, but that the members should have 
the same care one for another. And whether one mem- 
ber surfer, all the members suffer with it, or one member 
be honored, all the members rejoice with it." Mazzini 
himself could not now, eighteen hundred years after, de- 



IMMORTALITY. 



289 



clare more strongly the principle of association. Comte 
could not assert more largely the doctrine of interna- 
tional interdependence. Of course it may be said that 
these things were written solely to the Christian Church. 
That I deny, if the Christian Church is taken to mean 
any isolated body at any time in history. They were 
written to describe the ideal of the Christian Church, 
and that ideal includes all mankind. They describe 
what ought to be the relation of nations to nations, of 
nations to tribes of every type and color, of men to 
men all over the world. And they describe what Avill 
be in the fulness of time, when the body of mankind, 
past, present, and future, shall be wholly finished, and 
the actual be identical with the ideal Man. 

It is this mighty conception which we ought to link to 
our thought of immortality. Without it, the desire of 
eternal life becomes selfish and swiftly falls to evil : with 
it, it grows into the grandest thought which a man can 
have on earth ; with it, immortality binds itself up with 
all the noblest speculations of patriot, philosopher, and 
lover of man, with all the ideas of our time which have 
regard to a universal and united mankind, giving to 
them new strength and coherence, a fresher hope, an 
unashamed faith ; and leading them beyond the silence 
and inaction of the tomb, where positivist and secularist 
bury forever the mighty drama of the past of men, bids 
them look forward with a morning light in their eyes to 
the endless beauty and unfailing work of a mankind so 
loved, so deeply loved by us, that, when for a moment 
the thought crosses our brain that it could die and make 
no sign, something seems to break within our heart. 



IMMOBTALITY.-IIL* 



1871. 

" For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live 
unto him." — Luke xx., 38. 

It has been said by the author of the History of 
nationalism that " the discoveries of modern science 
form a habit of mind which is carried far beyond the 
limits of physics." 

Nowhere is this more true than in the scornful doubt 
with which some natural philosophers meet the belief in 
immortality, or in the bold denial which they give it. It 
is not long ago since I heard a geologist say, " As a body, 
we have given up the belief in immortality." It may be 
worth while to-day to suggest, first, a cause for this 
wide-spread surrender of an old belief among the men 
who pursue physical science ; secondly, to look into the 
reason they give for their denial, and to see if that rea- 
son be reasonable ; and, thirdly, to suggest a proof of the 
doctrine. 

1. The cause I believe to be, in the case of many men 
of science, an unequal development of their nature ; in 
other words, a want of uniform culture. They give up 

* I am indebted to Fichte's Vocation of Man for a portion of the argument 
in this sermon, from our consciousness of will and its results to the existence 
of a " self-active Reason and a living Will." 



IMMORTALITY, 



291 



their whole life and all its energy to the study of physi- 
cal £)henomena. In these phenomena, they find nothing 
spiritual. The strata of an ocean-bed tell them nothing, 
in their vast succession of life and death, of the eternal 
continuance of the individual. The combinations of the 
elements do not speak of the union of the soul with 
the Eternal Soul of God, and in the convolutions of 
the brain and the interweaving of the nerves thev will 
not discover faith or love or reverence ; or, not being able 
to deny their existence, they say that they dissolve with 
the nerve matter, of which they are modes of motion. 
Not only do they study nothing but these things, but 
they put aside any suggestions of spiritual feeling which 
may come to them in their work, as disturbing elements, 
as dimming the " dry light " in which they toil. It is 
no wonder, then, that their spiritual faculty becomes 
dwarfed or paralyzed, till, not finding its motions in 
themselves, they are ready to deny their existence else- 
where. On the other hand, their peculiar habit of mind 
becomes abnormally developed, and even their imagi- 
nation is only used in one direction. They are like men 
who should sit all their life in a chair and exercise their 
arms violently. Their arms become immensely strong, 
their legs so feeble that they cannot walk. One would 
not be surprised to hear these persons say, " On the 
whole, as a body, we have given up any belief in walk- 
ing being either pleasant or intended for the human 
race." The answer is, " You are no judge till you have 
recovered the use of your legs." 

Nor is one in the least surprised by a similar assertion 
on the part of some natural philosophers with regard to 
immortality. Given the previous habit of mind and 



292 



FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 



work, what else but unbelief could ensue ? Only we can 
scarcely refrain a smile when the assertion is made with 
a certain Pharisaic air, "Nature, I thank thee, I am not 
led away by superstition or feeling, even as these Chris- 
tians " ; and the only possible answer is a smile, such as 
the natural philosopher would greet a religious man 
with, who had as much neglected his intellect and its 
exercise as the denier of immortality has neglected his 
spirit and its exercise, and who should say, as if it set- 
tled the whole question, " On the whole, we have ceased 
to believe in the truth of the theory of gravitation." 

But, again, as there are some who have lost the use of 
the religious powers through neglect of them, so there 
are others in whom the religious powers seem wholly 
wanting. They seem to be born with a radical defect 
in their nature, and they can no more see the truth or 
the necessity of immortality than some who are color 
blind can see the beauty or the use of color. None are 
more upright than this class of scientific men : they love 
truth, and pursue after it in physics without one back- 
ward step. But they cannot understand the things of 
the spirit, for these are naturally foolishness to them. 

I can see the use, almost the necessity, of this. Nat- 
ure has to be ruthlessly examined, forced step by step to 
yield her secrets. The good of the race demands that 
a certain amount of this work should be done by men 
who are not disturbed by the speculations or the pas- 
sions of the spirit; and, though there are many who unite 
with ease the realms of faith and of experiment under 
one government, yet there are a few whose work is 
needed in physics, and who would do but little therein, if 
they were called on to contend also in the world of the 



IMMORTALITY. 



293 



spirit. These, I think, are so far sacrificed in this life 
for the good of the whole ; allowed to remain imperfect 
men that they may do their own special work in a per- 
fect maimer. And we accept their work with gratitude, 
and say to ourselves when we regret their want, " God 
has plenty of time to finish the education of his laborers : 
that which is deficient here will be added hereafter." 
But at the same time, while we recognize the excellent 
work of these philosophers in their own sphere, we ask 
of them not to force upon us the results of their blind- 
ness in another region. If a man cannot see red, we do 
not let him inrpose on us the statement that red is not to 
be seen, even though he may be a perfect musician. If 
a man cannot conceive immortality, we do not let him 
inrpose on us the statement that immortality is a vain 
dream, even though he may be a natural philosopher of 
the first rank. We are bound to say to the one, As a 
musician, we accept your criticisms : as a judge of color, 
you are of no value; and to the other, As a natural 
philosopher, we bow to your conclusions : as a judge of 
the truth or falsehood of immortality, your opinion is 
worthless. 

Again, in no way is the habit of mind of which we 
are speaking carried further than in the saying of some 
physiologist, — that all thought and feeling are inseparably 
bound up with physical form, with nervous centres and 
the rest ; that form makes mind, and therefore that mind, 
feeling, memory, and the desires, the pain, and the joy 
of that which we call the sj)irit, perish with the disso- 
lution of the machine of which they are part. I have 
just as good a right to start from the other side, and to 
say that thought makes form: nay, I have even more 



294 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



right ; for, by a strict process of reasoning, one may fairly 
arrive at the statement that our own frame and the whole 
material universe is the product of our own thought. I 
do not say that I know this, nor assert that mind makes 
form, but it is just as probable as, and even more prob- 
able than, the opposite assertion. Both statements are 
incapable of sufficient proof. Professor Huxley says 
that, "when men begin to talk about there being nothing 
else in the universe but matter and force and necessary 
laws, he declines to follow them"; and equally, when 
men say that there is nothing else in the universe but 
thought or will or consciousness, we should decline to 
follow them. The latter is far more possible than the 
other : I am myself inclined to believe it, but I do not 
know it. All we know with relation to our body and 
mind is that certain physical changes take place simul- 
taneously with every thought and feeling. But no 
knowledge of the structure of the brain or nerves can 
show us the connecting link between the two, or enable 
us to say that physical motion is thought or thought 
physical motion. " The passage from the physics of the 
brain," says Dr. Tyndall, " to the corresponding facts of 
consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 
thought and the definite molecular action in the brain 
occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual 
organ, nor apj^arently any rudiment of it, which could 
enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one 
phenomenon to the .other. They aj)pear together, we 
know not why." There is no proof, then, that conscious- 
ness is inseparably connected with the physical frame, 
and therefore no proof that it perishes with it. The 
truth, then, of the doctrine of immortality remains, con- 



IMMORTALITY. 



295 



sidered from the intellectual point of view, an open ques- 
tion ; and to daringly assert that it is untrue is ridiculous 
in the mouth of a sensible man. 

I may say here, in a parenthesis, that Christianity by 
no means denies that thought and form in man are 
closely connected one with the other. On the contrary, 
the doctrine of the resurrection seems to imply that the 
human consciousness needs form in order to be conscious 
of itself, for it allots a body to the soul. It does not say, 
as some have vainly fabled, that the body we place in 
the earth, and whose elements passed into the earth, is 
raised again : it does say that God gives a spiritual body 
to the soul, whatever that may mean. It throws the 
matter on the omnipotence of God ; and, if we believe 
in God at all, that a new form should knit itself to a 
mind and spirit which have become personal through 
the memories and work of a human life is no more in- 
credible than that they should have been originally knit 
together. 

Moreover, should it turn out to be true that there is 
nothing actually existing but thought, and that our pres- 
ent bodies are only the product of our j^ower of present- 
ing to ourselves our own conceptions, then, supposing 
that our personal order of thought continues after that 
which we call death, it will weave out of its conscious- 
ness, under changed conditions, a new vehicle for itself, 
and forever appear to itself and others to be connected 
with form. 

But to return to our argument. The natural philos- 
opher who may allow the possibility of immortality will 
at the same time refuse to consider it as a practical ques- 
tion, because, before any intellectual proof can be given 



296 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



of it, a spiritual world must be assumed ; and he refuses 
to believe without proof in the existence of such a 
world. He takes nothing for granted : he will have faith 
in nothing which cannot be proved to the satisfaction of 
the understanding. 

!Now, I want to try and give some reply to this. I will 
not assume, as will be seen, a spiritual world. I will only 
begin with the assumption of the reality of a command, 
outside of our thought, which bids us do what is right, 
and supposes that we know what is right. But even 
this is an act of faith, and to that our natural philosopher 
objects in any shape. 

"Well, it seems to me that precisely the same difficulty 
which he alleges against the consideration of immortality 
may be alleged against himself. He, too, must begin 
with an act of faith, and without that be<rinnin£ he can 
know nothing at all about the physical world. That he 
does know something about it is plain. How did he win 
that knowledge ? He would say, By deductive and in- 
ductive reasoning, accompanied by experiment. I do 
not contradict him ; but I say that he has left out one of 
the factors of the answer, and a very important one : he 
has left out the act of faith with which he started. He 
willed, by an impulse within himself, for which his edu- 
cated reason can give no proof, to believe in the exist- 
ence of a physical world. And without that act of faith 
he could, by any and every process of reasoning, have 
only arrived at the knowledge that he knew nothing 
at all. It is not difficult to make this clear. By the 
creation of theories which he afterwards proved true 
through their explanation of all the phenomena within 
their several spheres, by long experimental arguments 



IMMORTALITY. 



297 



conducted from fact to fact, he at last arrived, step after 
step, at the conception of one thing outside himself by 
which all things are, and of which all things are forms, 
and he calls this Force, — the constant force of the 
universe. And, having thus reduced all things to one 
expression, he may think that he knows all things, or is 
in the sure way of knowing them. I do not say that he 
is not ; but I do say that he assumes without proof, and 
by faith, that there is this thing outside of his thought, 
this Force, which is the physical universe. For, with- 
out assuming that, what happens as he goes on thinking? 
He will go back, and say to himself : " Just as I ques- 
tioned whether red or blue had any real existence, and 
found that they had none, being only the result produced 
in my brain by sensations caused in the eye by waves of 
light of different lengths, and just as when I asked my- 
self whether light had any real existence as light, and 
found on inquiry that it was only a mode of motion, a 
form of force, which was light to me because my eye 
had certain atomic arrangements, but which might be 
electricity to me, if the atoms of my eye were differently 
arranged : so now I ask whether force itself has any 
real existence apart from my thought of it, and therefore 
whether there be a physical universe at all. And, led. 
by reasoning alone, I am forced to say that it has not, 
that there is nothing which I have not first thought, that 
I can have no thought without having first thought it. 
By reasoning alone, I come to the conclusion that the 
whole physical universe is but a picture which my own 
thought presents to itself, and therefore that I know 
nothing about it as it really is, if it is ; for, even with 
regard to my own thought, I cannot say whether I really 



298 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



think or only think that I think. I have reached a point 
at which all certainty disappears. I only know that I 
know nothing." 

But when we have arrived at this point, and abso- 
lutely discredited all existence, even our own, — for the 
argument may be pushed to that, — the absurdity of the 
conclusion tells us that there is something wrong in our 
method of reasoning, that some factor has been left out. 

Our conclusion is that we know nothing; and the 
understanding, working alone, brings us to that. But 
one man will say, " The fact is that I do know something 
about the world of nature." "Well," I reply, "look back, 
and you will find that you either began with an act of 
faith in the reality of the physical universe, or that you 
put in that act of faith in the course of your argu- 
ment." To another, who allows that his reasoning has 
led him to the conclusion that he can say nothing cer- 
tain about physical existence, we reply : " No, you never 
can know, till you have resolved to add the factor of 
faith in an outward world to your argument." 

We must begin our reasoning by an act of faith in 
the existence of a physical world, real at least to us, 
practically independent of us ; and it is this act of faith 
which gives consistence to the whole fabric of our physi- 
cal knowledge, makes it useful, keeps up our work, and 
saves us from yielding to the conclusion to which we 
are driven by the work of the reasoning faculty alone. 
It is the foundation-stone on which the whole of natural 
science is built. 

An unknown impulse in our constitution, the origin 
of which we cannot trace, determines our will — in spite 
of our educated reason — to believe in a physical world. 



IMMORTALITY. 



299 



And that is as much and as absolute an act of faith as 
that whereby we believe in God or in the reality of 
duty, — two things which are one, and which together 
infer immortality. When the man of science, then, 
says to me, "I refuse to consider immortality, it sets 
out with an act of faith," I reply, " You might as well 
refuse to consider the physical motions of the universe; 
for to do so demands that you should first believe in a 
physical universe, a belief for which you can give no 
proof at all, till you have believed it." 

And now to apply this to the matter in hand, to the 
question of the proof of immortality. Taking the under- 
standing alone as our guide, and believing nothing which 
cannot be made plain to reasoning, we arrive m the 
spiritual region at a conclusion similar to that which we 
found in the region of physics, — at a knowledge only 
that we know nothing of duty, immortality, or God. 
We ask and ask again ; and the more we ask, the more 
sceptical we become. This or that may be or may not 
be. I know nothing at all. And this is misery to an 
earnest man. 

But as we find that the natural philosopher begins 
by willing to believe that there is a physical world to 
him, so now, in this other region, we ask ourselves 
whether there is nothing in us which claims our faith, 
and for which we can bring no proof. Is there any- 
thing in our consciousness which is independent of our 
thought? And, as we listen, we hear a voice which 
says, " You were not born only to know, but far more to 
act ; and not to know and through knowledge to act, 
but to act, and through action to know." We have an 
impulse to moral activity, which we feel is one with our 



300 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



existence ; and this impulse seems to be originally be- 
yond all knowledge, to transcend the realm of the 
understanding, to be, not anything we think, but the 
ground of all our thinking. And we seem to know 
immediately and without any j^roof — by a different kind 
of knowledge, therefore, than that which we gain from 
reasoning — that we must obey this inijmlse, or fall into 
nothingness. If we take up our old habit and submit 
this inner voice to the questions of the understanding, 
we are forced to ask if we really feel this impulse or 
only think we feel it ; and speculation suggests that the 
impulse may be only the thought of a thought which 
our consciousness presents to us, and that, if we act 
upon it, we cannot know whether we really act or only 
seem to ourselves to act. Tenfold darkness of doubt 
surrounds us then, and our life becomes like a dream 
within a dream. Therefore, in despair, we make a bold 
step, and, casting away those inquiries which led us 
to the abyss of nothingness, we resolve with all our 
will to believe that this impulse to moral action is abso- 
lutely a real impulse, and to obey it as the true calling 
of our life. TVe set aside the understanding at this 
point, and we call faith to our side. Immediately, we 
know not how, we are convinced that right is a reality, 
and that we can do what is right, and that we shall find 
our true and only life in doing it. We are convinced 
of this through faith; and our faith arises not from a 
series of proofs offered by the understanding, but from 
our having freely willed to believe in duty, — that is, from 
the whole set of our inward character. 

And now, having by faith found this clear starting- 
point, that we are bound to act according to conscience, 



IMMORTALITY. 



301 



what follows? The same voice which tells us that we 
must act rightly tells us also, and that necessarily, 
that our actions will have a result in the future; and, 
as our will and action are conceived of as right, the 
concej)tioii at once arises of a better world, in which our 
will and acts shall have their due value. We neces- 
sarily look forward to and live in a nobler world. 
"Where is, then, this nobler world? The religious in- 
fidel may accept so far our argument ; but he will say 
that this world to which we look forward is to be found 
not in any spiritual world, but in a future human world, 
when man has subdued the forces of the universe so 
that they spoil his work no longer ; when he has, by the 
long effort of those who have been faithful to the cause 
of freedom and right, produced a perfect state in which 
each shall love his neighbor, and each nation love its 
neighbor nation as himself. This is the nobler world to 
which our actions and will aspire, and in it are their 
results. Neither immortality nor a spiritual world needs 
here be inferred from the argument. 

Bat, granting that mankind will reach this perfect 
state, what is to happen then? There will be nothing 
more to do, nothing to aspire to left, nothing more to 
know. Will action, then, and aspiration die, and curi- 
osity fail for food? If so, men will cease to be men, 
mankind will stagnate in its j)lace, or will weep itself 
to death, for it will have no more worlds to conquer. 
Such is the necessary result of this theory without the 
addition of immortal life ; and to this miserable end 
we can quietly look forward, for this we can work with 
energy and patience ! When Ave have made the race 
perfect, we have most utterly ruined the race. It seems 



302 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



an intolerable conclusion, and an absurd one ; and there 
is no way out of it but either the supposition of the 
annihilation of mankind, which renders our will to do 
right and the effects we inevitably annex to it ridiculous 
in our eyes, or the supposition that there is another 
world where the race goes on under new conditions, to 
do new work and win new knowledge, where the will 
to do right has its highest and most sure results. 

Moreover, our righteous will has but few results in 
this world. There are a thousand thoughts which it 
determines, a thousand feelings it impels, which never 
pass beyond our inner life. The steady volition toward 
good of a long life has little result on this earth. Many 
of the good things we succeed in putting into action 
miserably fail for want of prudence, or even produce 
evil in this world. Where, then, are the results of these 
things? where does the will act? where are the broken 
lines, the inner life, completed? If nowhere, and plainly 
it is not here, then half of our being is made up of 
broken ends of thread. 

We are driven therefore to think that the nobler 
world in which all good action has its own good re- 
sults, in which our will (determined toward right) serves 
always a noble purpose, is another and a higher world 
than this, of which we and all our brother-men are 
citizens. In this world, our will has power when we 
will to do right : it sets on foot endless results. In 
this world, which must be spiritual, because our will is 
spiritual, we live and move and have our being now, as 
really, nay, more really, than we live and move in the 
physical world by our outward acts, and when we die 
we do not enter a world of which we have had no ex- 



IMMORTALITY. 



303 



perience, but in a more complete manner, as free from 
earthly limitations, into a world in which we have lived 
already. 

We are forced, then, by feeling that our virtuous will 
must have results, and by the fact that it has only a 
small number of results in this world, to believe in a 
spiritual world in which the will, being itself spiritual, ' 
finds its true ends fulfilled. That is the first step in 
the argument for immortality, after the act of faith of 
which I spoke has been freely chosen by the will. 

The second step carries us on to the truth of Im- 
mortality. 

When I conceive of my will to do right having neces- 
sary results in a spiritual world, I conceive of a law as 
ruling in that world. If the results must be, there must 
be a law by which they are necessary. To that law I 
am connected by moral obedience; and, because it an- 
nexes fixed results to virtuous volition in me and in all 
men, it is above and beyond our wills. In it all our 
finite wills are held, and to it they all are subject. But 
since the world m which this law is, is not the world of 
sense, but a spiritual world in which will acts, the law of 
that world cannot be like that which we call a law here, 
— a mere expression of antecedents and sequences, a 
mere statement of the way in which things are: it must 
be a living law ; it must be self-active reason ; it must be 
a will. 

And it is a Will, — the Will from whom all human 
wills have flowed, to which all human wills are related, 
in whom all human wills have being; the only self- 
existent, the only unchangeable, the only infinite Will, 
of whom and by whom and through whom are all things, 

I 



304 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



— God invisible, eternal, absolute, to whom be glory for 
ever and ever. The voice I hear in my heart, and to 
which I willed to give obedience, and whose reality I 
believed at first, I know now was his voice. My will, 
which determined to obey that voice, was urged thereto 
by this infinite Will. My will is related to him, and in 
him must have results in the whole spiritual world 
which exists in him and by him. And this which is 
true of me is true of all my fellow-men. As the will of 
each is contained and sustained by him, and has its 
own special results in him, he becomes the spiritual 
bond of union which unites me to all the race : we 
all together share our life in him. And because we 
share in his being, and he is eternal and imperishable, 
we also know, at last, that we are eternal and imperish- 
able, and that, for the certainty of which our soul has 
longed and cried, is a reality. We are immortal. Death, 
as we call it, may touch our sensible vesture, but it is 
only a vesture which decays. Our being goes on in 
another life ; for we live in his life, and our true world 
is not this world. " We look for a city which hath 
foundations." We abide in him and he in us, and he 
abides forever. 

The parallel, in fact, between the two lines of argu- 
ment, is exact. The natural philosopher having put in, 
either at the beginning or in the process of his work, 
a belief in the existence of Force, which is a belief in an 
outward world, finds that which he was driven to as- 
sume confirmed at every step of his inquiry. He cannot 
understand a number of facts except on the ground that 
Force is a reality to him ; and he leaves aside, as unprac- 
tical in his work, the question as to whether it has only 



IMMORTALITY. 



305 



an existence in Thought. His theory of Force explains 
by far the greater part of natural phenomena, and is 
contradicted by none. He returns then to his starting- 
point, and says : " That which I originally believed with- 
out proof is true. Force is a real existence." 

Precisely in the same way, we prove that the reality of 
Duty, which we willed to believe, and which, seen as we 
saw it (not as something developed by the slow action 
of social circumstances, but as a command independent 
of our own thought and coming to us from without), 
necessarily inferred a spiritual world and God and Im- 
mortality, is an absolute reality. It and its necessary 
results, which together form our theory of the Universe 
of Spirit, solve the greater part of the moral and spirit- 
ual problems of life, and are not distinctly contradicted 
by any. 

But it may be said that the analogy is not exact. For 
though Force or the physical world is proved to have 
a real existence to us, it is not proved to have an inde- 
pendent existence ; and some scientific men are in doubt 
on that question. All Force, they say, may be nothing 
more than Will, — Will-force. Moreover, though the sup- 
position of its existence explains most of the phenomena 
we know, that does not necessarily infer that it has any 
existence independent of Thought. We have no right 
then, an objector may say, to infer, because our theory 
of the Universe of Spirit explains the moral and spirit- 
ual phenomena of human life and its history, the actual 
existence of Duty, of a spiritual world, of God, an of 
Immortality. We can only infer their existence in 
Thought. 

Only their existence in Thought ! In what else should 



306 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



they exist, and what existence can be more absolute? 
We ask no more. For, taking the ground of those sci- 
entific men who think that Force is "Will, they think no 
more than we wish them to think that there is a Will, 
and therefore a Thought, in whom the Universe is. In 
thinking thus, they grant God, and the real existence of 
all things in him. In thinking thus, the physical world 
is no less a reality to them, but more. The question 
whether it have indej^endent existence or not does not 
touch their work, nor will their work on that account be 
of less moment forever and ever ; for the principles of 
the order of this apparent world will be always the same 
in any other apparent world, however different from 
this, for they are fixed in God's Thought. We have a 
right, then, to say that the analogy fits accurately. 

We assume, then, a spiritual world, or rather we as- 
sume the reality of Duty, from which we necessarily 
infer, as I said, a spiritual world ; and, when we find 
that the phenomena of the human conscience and spirit 
can be explained on that assumption, we return to our 
starting-point, and say : " That which we believed with- 
out proof is true. There is an imperative beyond our 
thought and independent of our consciousness, which we 
are bound to obey. The moment we will to obey it, we 
are conscious that it must have results, and, on further 
thought, that these results can only be fully realized in 
a world in which Will and Thought alone exist, and 
therefore in a spiritual, not a material world. And, 
granting these things, our will to do right, and a world 
in which Will and Thought alone exist, we are forced to 
infer One whose Will is absolutely good, and who con- 
tains in his Will our will, and in his self-active Reason 



IMMORTALITY. 



307 



and Will, which are his personality, our personality; 
One therefore who is Eternal Life, and the life of all, 
the only pure Being, in whom all Being is. And, lastly, 
we are driven with joy to feel and know that, if Duty 
and a spiritual world and God be truths, Immortality 
must also be a Truth. If we are inseparably connected 
with the Infinite and Eternal Will, we must ourselves 
be, as derived from him, infinite and eternal. 

And now, with this knowledge in our hand, we turn 
to our life, and find it falling into perfect order. We 
know whence we have come and whither we are going. 
We know the end of all our brother-men and the neces- 
sary end of all this struggle of Man. Problem after 
problem is solved, difficulty after difficulty vanishes 
away ; and, if some things remain obscure, we know that 
we have but to wait, and our key will unlock them, 
when we are able to bear the revelation. Peace enters 
our heart, the peace which comes of certain knowledge. 
We know and rest in the infinite meaning of the Sa- 
viour's saying : " God is not a God of the dead, but of 
the living j for all live unto him." 



IMMOETAJLITT.-IV. 



1871. 

" For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live unto 
him." — Luke xx., 38. 

No one can help feeling, at this time of the year, a 
forecasting of decay. The melancholy skies, the naked 
trees, the heavy smell of rotting leaves, the hateful at- 
mosphere, tell their own story. And influenced as we 
are through blood and bone by the elements which sur- 
round us, and by the memories of brighter weather, the 
spring of life relaxes, and our thoughts take the color of 
decay. 

As it is year after year, is it so for man after man ? 
Time goes on, but past years do not live again. The 
flower-life goes on, but not the same flowers. And does 
mankind go on, but not men? Have we each our spring, 
our summer, our rich and swiftly miserable autumn, our 
winter of death, and never another spring? This is the 
thought of many at this time. The race continues, but 
the individual jjerishes. Death is personal annihilation. 

Last Sunday, we gave some reasons for the prevalence 
of this thought among natural philosophers : to-day, we 
begin by giving some reasons for its prevalence in other 
classes of society, and pass on to consider the reason- 



IMMORTALITY. 



309 



ableness or not of annihilation ; meaning by annihilation 
not, of course, the destruction of the elements of which 
our body is composed, but the resolution into those ele- 
ments of all that we call thought, feeling, will, and self- 
consciousness. 

The reasons of the prevalence of this opinion vary 
with different types of men and their different lives. It 
arises in some from the intensity of youthful ardor, when 
it has been overstrained. They have been so full of life 
that they have drawn upon it too much, and drained the 
source dry. Weary, exhausted, yet still desirous to find 
the old enjoyment, they are tossed between desire and 
weakness to fulfil de-sire, till at last the only comfort 
seems to be to look forward to an eternal sleep. " Why 
should the vital torment of life be renewed ? " they ask, 
forgetting that it is torment because life has been mis- 
used, not knowing that life is vital joy when it is used 
with temperance. 

It arises in others, and these chiefly business men, 
from the disease of unceasing work. One of the things 
which is acting worst on English society is that a num- 
ber of men have got into that state in which recreation 
is impossible. All the year round, from morning to 
night, they pursue their trade or their profession with- 
out a single break, except their heavy after-dinner sleep. 
Even in dreams, they hunt their work, like dogs. This 
is also a misuse of life. All joy is taken out of it, beauty 
has no place in its foggy realm : even love resolves itself 
into a dull desire to provide for one's children. The 
world is not their oyster which they open : they are the 
oysters of the world. And, when they are deaf and 
blind to all the loveliness and j^assion and movement of 



310 



FAITH AZSTD FEEEDCDI. 



life, what wonder if, having become machines, they do 
not care to run on forever ? 

It arises in the case of a number of cultivated young 
men from the depression of failure. Within the last ten 
years there has been in the universities an atmosphere, 
almost tropical, of refined culture and scholarship; and 
in it a number of intellects and imaginations have been 
forced, till they are, for the most part, unfitted to do the 
rough work of the world. Educated, then, up to the 
point at which they fully comprehend and passionately 
feel the great things which men possessing genius have 
done, it seems to them, by a very common instinct, that 
they can either do the same, or at least that they have 
a right to try. Hence, we have the deluge of second and 
third rate painters, poets, novelists, critics, and the rest, 
with which England is now overspread. They begin 
with hope and joy ; and, after a little deserved applause 
for the j^assing pleasure they have given, mankind, whose 
judgment soon gets right, drops them, and they feel with 
bitterness that, though they have won something, it is 
not their ideal, and moreover that they can never reach 
their ideal. The applause does not deceive them: they 
are too well educated not to see, when the first excite- 
ment of production is over and they look at the work to 
which they have given their best powers, that they have 
failed. Disgust of life ensues, a kind of passionate hatred 
of themselves. In that atmosphere, no good work can be 
done ; and, if they try again, the inspiration which they 
had abandons them, it was founded on ignorance of the 
extent of their powers, knowledge has dispersed it : the 
failure is worse than before. But all this sort of work 
has unfitted them for ruder and more practical work. 



IMMORTALITY. 



311 



After riding on Pegasus, they cannot get into the traces 
and pull at the common chariot of the work of the world. 
They cease to act, they bury themselves in their learned 
and artistic leisure, and all vivid life is over. The bitter- 
ness of failure leads them to utter carelessness of a life 
to come. "Why should they renew the web which will 
crack from side to side again? And the inaction in 
which they live takes away the desire to live again, for 
it takes away the food of life. 

Moreover, among persons of this educated type, the 
same thing holds good, as in the case of the scientific 
man who pursues nothing else but science. Devotion to 
art or to criticism alone develops the faculties used to 
a strength out of all proportion to the rest. "Not only 
are the spiritual powers dwindled to a thread for want 
of use, so that immortal life is a pretty dream, but the 
faculties used, being unbalanced by other important 
powers of our nature, are not capable of forming a just 
judgment. Criticism, in discussing matters such as the 
evidence for immortality, discusses it as it would the 
evidence for the existence of an early and unimportant 
myth. It begins by supposing it is not true ; it leaves 
out all the spiritual phenomena which, in the history of 
the human heart, have accompanied faith in it ; it treats 
a question which belongs, by the hypothesis, to the realm 
of intellect and the spirit, as if it were a question of the 
pure intellect alone. On the face of it, nothing can be 
more absurd, — as absurd as the late discussion into which 
one of our philosophers enters with regard to a mother's 
love for a child, on physiological grounds alone. It is 
plain in this case that the critical powers have become 
so abnormally developed as to vitiate the purity of 
judgment. 



312 



FAITH A2STD FREEDOM. 



On the other hand, the mere aesthetic life tends equally 
to a belief in annihilation. A somewhat stern and ener- 
getic manliness is needed in the character of a highly 
educated man before he can look forward with joy to 
living for ever. Increase of knowledge and increased 
sensitiveness of feeling increase the pain of living ; and, 
though they also increase its joy, yet we begin to fear 
joy, for we know the reaction which follows it. "Can 
we bear," we ask, "going on with this struggle for- 
ever?" Yes, we can; but only when we are possessed 
by the noblest and the strongest ideas, when we enter 
into the struggle as men who are resolved not to re- 
treat a single step. Slowly, then, as we grow through 
long battle into veteran warriors, we feel, not the lan- 
guid pleasure in beauty, but the glorious joy of the war 
for right ; and to live forever becomes the first desire of 
life, for we know that it means life in union with 
eterna 1 Goodness, Truth, and Love. 

This sort of manliness the exclusively aesthetic life 
does not cherish, but enfeebles. It produces a soft, 
rather mournful habit of mind : it unnerves the more 
active powers, it makes men shrink from the clash of 
life ; its devotion to beauty, for beauty's sake alone, 
blurs the sharpness of the lines which divide right and 
wrong : everything which charms the senses, jn-ovided 
the charm be a delicate one, is lovely, and whether it 
is morally lovely or not is a secondary consideration. 
Pain, therefore, disease, strong effort, the struggle of 
doubt, the labor to find answers to great problems, such 
as this of immortality, become bitter and distressful; 
and in absolute seeking after and finding of the beauti- 
ful here, in exquisite enjoyment of it when found, and in 



IMMORTALITY. 



313 



exquisite regret of it when it can be no more enjoyed, all 
hope, nay, all possibility of enjoying another life than 
the present, passes away, and life becomes in youth a 
passionate desire to get all the joy and beauty possible 
before old age comes, and in old age a wailing memory 
of past delight, and a sorrowful waiting in as much 
quiet as j)ossible for the everlasting sleep. " Why enter 
another world? No other world can be lovelier than 
this; and, if I may not have this, I do not care for 
another." 

The reasons why many working-men reject immor- 
tality, I have spoken of elsewhere ; but there is one rea- 
son common to them and to many educated men. It is 
that we are living in a revolutionary period of thought, 
and the very fact that any opinion is an old one is enough 
to subject it to attack. Now, in the general revolt against 
things accredited by custom, not only is the orthodox 
faith involved, but also beliefs which, though included in 
Christianity, are older than it. Among these is the be- 
lief in immortality. We are doubting now the doctrine 
that the ancient Persian, Hindoo, and Hebrew clung to, 
that Cicero and Plato rejoiced in holding, that the Maho- 
metan does not dream of denying. It seems as if on 
this subject the whole world were going back into the 
old savage, or into even a less noble condition; for I 
suppose no man in hours of sober judgment has any 
doubt as to the nobleness of the idea of immortality, 
and the degradation involved in the idea of annihi- 
lation. But the truth is that a vast deal of the denial 
of the former among the working-classes and among the 
young men and women of the upper classes is not 
owing to any thought being expended on the subject, 



314 



FAITH AND FBEEBOM. 



but simply to the revolutionary impulse in them. " The 
thing is old, let us get rid of it. The conservative 
feeling supports it : everything which conservatism sup- 
ports we attack. Let us have something new." And 
it is not unamusing — if we put the religious feeling 
about it aside — to watch the self-conscious audacity 
with which people try to awake one's astonishment, and 
really awake one's pity, by airing in society their faith 
in annihilation, as if to believe in it were not intellect- 
ually and morally a miserable business. 

One would despair of the progress of mankind, if one 
thought that this would last. But revolutionary periods 
end by finding a new channel for their waters; and, 
though the exhausted ideas of the past perish in the 
whirlpool, the noble ideas live and now on with the 
new waters. We are now in a kind of backwater of 
the great river of Progress, and spinning round and 
round in a confusion of eddies and efforts to get on. 
When we have found our fresh thoughts and got them 
clear, we shall get out of the backwater with a rush, 
and stream on in that which I like better than revolu- 
tion, — steady movement, aware of itself, to distinctly 
recognized ends. But at present every one is naturally 
dissatisfied with the want of purpose, of clear aims, of 
any coherent ideas in social, political, religious, and 
artistic life. And the dissatisfaction shows itself chiefly 
in all matters which belong to the realm of art ; for 
in art one always finds the more subtile aspects of any 
society reflected. Our more modern poets and painters 
find nothing calm or perfect enough in modern life to 
represent. They go back out of the present to the 
past: they tell us stories and paint us scenes from the 



IMMORTALITY. 



315 



old Greek and Mediaeval life. They try to recover 
the dead motives of a dead life ; and a whole school has 
sprung up, both in poetry and on canvas, which pos- 
sesses much charm, but which is essentially mournful 
and retrograde, which smells of musk and ambergris, 
whose passion is more that of exhausted feeling trying 
by morbid means to sting itself into joy than the frank 
and healthy passion of youth, whose notes are not native 
to English soil, and whose work does not smack of the 
fresh air, nor seem done face to face with nature, but 
smells of scented rooms, lit up with artificial light. 

Our art has been driven from the present to the past, 
and those who enjoy and love it naturally cease to feel 
interest in the future : the whole tone of feeling it 
encourages tends to lessen the care for and the belief in 
a life to come. 

But this cannot last : the present is always too strong 
for the past ; and art and philosophy and literature, and 
with them educated society, will emerge from this back- 
water, when modern life finds clear aims, and flow on in 
new channels. Active life in the present will then pro- 
duce art and literature to represent it, and the interest 
in the present will make the future so interesting that 
the tendency to believe in immortality will take to itself 
fresh life. By that time, Christianity — I mean our pres- 
ent form of it, which is also in this revolutionary stage 
of confusion, changing old opinions for new — will also 
have refitted itself to the higher thoughts and wants of 
men; and its doctrine of immortality, freed from the 
low ideas with which it has been surrounded by a dying 
theology, present once more to men, longing again to 
live forever because they have found a vital j)resent, a 
glorious ideal to which they can aspire with joy. 



316 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



For, after all, what is at the root of this belief in an- 
nihilation? It is that our theology has been for some 
years presenting to us an idea of God wholly inadequate 
to our present intellectual and moral conceptions, and 
an idea of man which we now reject as ignoble, and as 
untrue because ignoble. Not that this idea of God was 
inadequate to past society, or that idea of man ignoble. 
They were then as high as most men could receive, 
though we always find a few who protested against 
them, and rose above the common level. But thought 
on these subjects is now up to that of the higher spirits 
of the past, and theology must rise to the moral and 
intellectual level of the present before immortality can 
be a universal faith again. 

An adequate idea of God, a noble idea of man, — these 
are the ideas which, reintroduced into theology, will 
bring back the belief in immortality ; for they will 
render the theory of annihilation intellectually as well 
as morally absurd. 

The common notion of God divides his being from 
the universe and from mankind. It is so afraid of 
being called pantheistic that it forgets the truth which 
is in pantheism. If nature and mankind are, as a 
whole or in any of their parts, capable of being truly 
severed from God, so that the one runs along like a 
machine which may run down, or that in the other one 
soul can, by becoming eternally evil, be eternally divided 
from the Godhead, then God cannot be considered ab- 
solute nor all-comprehending nor all-powerful for good. 
There are points at which his power fails, his goodness 
retires from the field, — points at which he is forced to 
struggle; and the possibility of inferring these things 



IMMORTALITY. 



317 



from the orthodox idea of God is surely inconsistent 
with the idea of him which we feel now that we ought to 
possess. It is really less than we can conceive, and for us 
to worship it any longer is idolatry. We must have an 
adequate idea of God; and, till we get it into theology, a 
great number of men who think dee])ly will be atheists, 
and necessarily disbelievers in immortality. 

Again, owing to this uncultivated notion of a God 
who sits apart, at a distance from us, we are forced to 
assume another great j)ower in the universe. If any 
one of us, or anything, can have or retain being, apart 
from him, then there must be another source of being 
than his. And, practically speaking, that is what is 
held. The artist talks of nature, the philosoj:>her of 
law, the theologian of the devil; and we have a dual 
government of the world, in which God tends to become 
more and more a remote and misty phantom. 

Now, I say, if we believe in a God at all, that the only 
adequate conception of him which will satisfy our intel- 
lect and heart alike is one which conceives of him as the 
sole self-existing Being and of everything and everyone 
as having Being only in his Being. The life of the uni- 
verse, of matter and spirit, is one life, — the Life of God 
infinitely conditioned in and through a myriad forms. 
There is not a shred of the world called the world of 
nature which is not held in him, and is not, indeed, his 
thought. We all are, only because we are in him and 
part of his being, our personality held in his personality. 
Do not call this pantheism. It may be pantheism, but it I 
is something more than pantheism. It is not saying the / 
universe is God: it is saying God is the universe, and 
something more than the universe. It is the doctrine 



318 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



which Saint Paul inferred from the old Greek poet : " In 
him we live and move and have our being ; as certain 
also of your own poets have said, For we are also his 
offspring." It is the doctrine of Saint Paul himself : 
"Of him and by him and through him are all things"; 
and the moment we fully conceive that he alone is, and 
that nothing is which is not he, it becomes intellectuallv 
absurd that any soul should go out as a candle. Once 
having been, once having had consciousness, once having 
had personality, it is impossible to lose being, conscious- 
ness, and personality. That which is in God, in eternal 
Being, cannot perish. 

But it is not intellectually absurd when God's existence 
is denied, and to this conclusion men come who think of 
what they mean by annihilation. They know that the 
denial of immortality irresistibly infers atheism ; that, if 
there is Eternal Being, those who have issued from that 
Being and have their being in him must be immortal: 
we cannot think the one without thinking the other. 
And I want those who so lightly talk of man dying 
forever to clearly understand either that they are talking 
nonsense, if they confess a God, or that they are logically 
driven into atheism. 

For not only is the notion of annihilation of person- 
ality — that is, of our consciousness, will, and character 
— intellectually absurd in face of an adequate intellect- 
ual conception of God, it is also morally absurd in face 
of an adequate moral conception of God. 

But the fact is that it is not morally absurd to many 
of us, because we have no adequate moral conception of 
God. The moral inadequacy of our thought of God is 
chiefly in this, that we accept a teaching which thinks 



IMMORTALITY. 



319 



of him as having no duties to his children. We are told 
that he has a Sovereign's right to do what he likes with 
us, and that we have no business to judge as to the right 
and wrong of his actions. 

I deny that at once on the ground already laid down, 
that our being is held in God's being, and therefore that 
what is truth and justice and love to us is the same in 
kind in us as in God, and that it is absurd to think other- 
wise. But, as these teachers do think otherwise, they go 
on to infer that things which would seem unjust if done 
by a man are not unjust if done by God. We are told 
that he creates us to damn us, or leaves us alone to ruin 
ourselves, or that he allows us to be children of the 
devil, things so absolutely immoral in an earthly father 
that we are driven either into a state of blind submis- 
sion in which intellect is destroyed and the moral sense 
utterly confused, or into absolute revolt, or into a kind 
of hopeless drifting carelessness of the whole matter. 
And in the last state of mind are those who still cling by 
old custom to belief in God and immortality, but who 
have no real pleasure or interest in their belief in whom 
it produces no result. 

!N"ow, such a want of vital faith is due to a mean con- 
ception of their own moral nature following on a mean 
conception of God's moral nature. " He has left me to 
myself," they say ; " nay, more, I am told that I am vile 
and worthless spiritually, that my nature is utterly cor- 
rupt. If I am so bad," they go on, " why should I care 
what becomes of me ? If my nature is corrupt through- 
out, what is the use of aspiring to be better ? Nay, I do 
not believe in my aspirations : am I not told that they 
themselves are wicked?" This is the way they have 



320 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



argued long ago. Now they have ceased to trouble 
themselves about the matter ; but the result of the argu- 
ment remains as an unconscious influence below the sur- 
face of their life, and the effect is a total loss of interest 
in immortality, amounting to practical disbelief of it. 

All this is done away with by a true moral conception 
of God in his relation to us, based on the moral ideas 
which we possess ourselves from him. He has sent us 
forth from himself : therefore, he is bound to be, we feel, 
in the highest conceivable sense, a Father to us, and he 
is our Father. We can never, then, be separated from 
him, never let alone by him, never shut up by him in 
eternal evil. Our Being has come direct from his, and 
is now in his Being : therefore, our nature can never be 
utterly vile. Our aspirations are his voice in us: our 
justice, truth, and love, such as they are, are still the 
same in kind as his. 

He is pure moral being: therefore, since we cannot 
divide ourselves from him, and since he is bound as a 
Father to educate us, we must reach in the end j3ure 
moral being. 

It is thus that from an adequate moral conception of 
God we arrive at the second thing I said we wanted to 
restore to us the belief in immortality, — an adequate 
conception of man. We are inseparably united to pure 
intellectual and moral Being, and in that union we are 
great, and do great things of the brain and of the spirit. 

And now, in conclusion, taking both of these things 
together, the greatness of man in God and the absolute 
morality of God, which we now know is in kind the same 
as ours, let us see if annihilation be not morally absurd, 
if the being of God be granted. 



IMMORTALITY. 



321 



Of course I shall speak in what follows of good men, 
and it will be said that the argument does not prove that 
the wicked will not be annihilated. But I have already 
spoken of this question in previous sermons, and I hold 
that the destruction of the wicked is morally and logi- 
cally inrpossible, if there be a God who is the only self- 
existing Being, and if he be a moral Being. It is a 
question of redemption beyond this earth, but the pres- 
ent argument deals with the question as it lies before us 
in this world. 

No one can deny, who is not prejudiced by the low 
theological view of our nature, that it is capable of 
greatness of character. In every age there have been 
men who have forgotten self for the sake of right and 
truth and for a noble cause, even though the self-forget- 
fuiness meant death, — men whose glory shines with the 
serene light of stars in the sky which arches over his- 
tory. Others, too, have been, whose path has lain apart 
from fame, the quiet martyrs of self-surrender, who have 
died to the joys of life for the sake of others' joy, or 
borne in the eloquent silence of resignation bitter pain 
and grief. 

And has all that perished for them ? Has the noble 
effort and the faithful life been in vain for those who 
lived it ? Are they only to live in our memory and love, 
but they themselves " to be blown about the desert dust, 
or sealed within the iron hills"? It revolts all our 
moral feeling, if we believe in a moral God. Either 
there is no God, whose children we are, or the denial of 
immortality is absurd. There is nothing between athe- 
ism and immortality. 

And that infinite thirst of knowledge we possess, that 



322 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



power of thought which sweeps us beyond the world of 
sense and time ; that inexhaustible activity of imagina- 
tion by which we create new worlds ; our passionate cry 
for the rest which lies in harmony of nature ; our desire 
for fuller life, when life is filled with great thoughts and 
pure and passionate love of man ; that yearning of the 
s])irit for freedom from sin and for union with truth ; 
that ceaseless cry for more light ; our delight in rever- 
encing something better than ourselves, in ideal ex- 
cellence ; our intense sensibility to beauty and sublimity 
in nature, — have these no final cause, if God exists ? 
Did he give us these j^owers of intellect and heart and 
spirit, — powers which draw their fire from the fire of 
his eternal Thought and Will} — only to resume them 
into himself, to lure us on to work and then to quench 
our light ; to make our hopes our hell, our noblest long- 
ings our deepest misery; to extinguish our exhaustless 
effort and curiosity in the degradation of an eternal 
sleep ? Did he give us that love of the ideal, that de- 
light in beauty, that tearful interest in his universe, 
only to make the grave and the wretched dust of our 
corruption the vain and miserable end ? Has he written 
his scorn on all our aspirations after truth and light and 
holiness ? Does he smile with contemptuous pity when 
men's hearts go up to him in praise for the freshness 
and radiance of the spring? It is incredible. Either 
the atheist is right, or that immortality is untrue is 
absurd. 

Look, too, at our triumph over death. When decay 
usurps the powers, and memory and life slip from us 
like a dream, it is then that our inner being most often 
rises into beauty and victory. And, when the last act 



IMMORTALITY. 



323 



of the man is the assertion of his immortality, does the 
Lord of Righteousness contradict him in contempt ? Is 
the spirit on the verge of its greatest loss at its very- 
noblest moment of gain? Does it reach with faithful 
effort, and thrill with divine hope, the mountain peak, 
only to topple over the precipice of annihilation ? Then 
those who believe in God are the real fools of the 
world. 

Our soul swells with reverence aud love for those 
who held life as nothing in comparison with truthful- 
ness to right ; our soul is full of a sad condemnation of 
those who prefer to live when life is infamous ; and yet, 
if annihilation be true, God desj)ises the nobility which 
we revere, and tacitly approves the infamy which we 
condemn. But this is incredible, if we conceive of God 
as moral : it is hideous. Either, then, there is no God, 
or annihilation is false. 

Finally, it is true of a noble human life that it finds 
its highest enjoyment in the consciousness of progress. 
Our times of greatest pleasure are when we have won 
some higher peak of difficulty, trodden under foot some 
evil, refused some pleasant temptation for truth's sake, 
been swept out of our narrow self by love, and felt day 
by day, in such high labors, so sure a growth of moral 
strength within us that we cannot conceive of an end of 
growth. 

And, when all that is most vigorous within us, does 
God, — pure, moral Being, — does God say No ? Is that 
insatiable delight in progress given to the insect of an 
hour? Does there seem to be a Spirit who leads us 
through life, conquering the years in us, redeeming us 
from all evil, bringing in us calm out of sorrow, faith 



324 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 

out of doubt, strength out of trial? And, when he has 
made us great of spirit like himself, does he bury all 
that wealth of heart in nothingness? 

What incredible thing is this ? Only credible if there 
be no God. 



LETTER TO THE CONGREGATION OF 
BEDFORD CHAPEL. 



"SALT WITHOUT SAVOR." 



« 



LETTER TO THE CONGREGATION 
OF BEDFORD OHAPED. 

To the Congregation of Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury : 

It is only after serious and long consideration that I 
have come to the resolution of which I now inform my 
congregation. I have decided that it is my duty to 
leave the Church of England, and I have already placed 
the resignation of my license in the hands of the Bishop 
of London. When, some years ago, Bedford Chapel 
w T as presented to me, the theological opinions I held 
were legally tenable in the Church of England, but they 
were not in accordance with its orthodox scheme of doc- 
trine. I made use of the liberty the law afforded me, 
and claimed the compromise which the Church, desirous 
to expand its circle, offers so freely to its members. 
Nevertheless, I felt even then that my opinions might 
settle into some form which the large liberty of the 
Church could not tolerate; and I accepted the gift of 
the chapel on the expressed condition that I should not 
be prevented from stating opinions which might hazard 
my position in the Church of England. That time has 
now arrived. As long as I had any doubt as to the in- 
credibility of miracles, I could justly remain a minister 
of the Church. I was also bound by a multitude of con- 



328 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



siderations not to act on impulse or in a hurry. The 
matter was too grave for haste, but it was also too grave 
to lay aside. I considered it for four years, but at last 
to consider it any longer meant to wilfully blind myself 
to the truth for the sake of my position. Therefore, 
some Sundays ago, in a series of sermons on Miracles 
and on Authority, I expressed the conclusions at which 
I had arrived. These conclusions, being equivalent to 
an assertion of the incredibility of miracle, and to a 
denial of the exclusive authority of the Church or of the 
Bible, compel me to say that I cannot any longer, with 
truth to myself or loyalty to the Church, remain its 
minister. The form of doctrine to which the Church of 
England has committed itself appears to stand on the 
Miracle of the Incarnation as a building on its founda- 
tion. Not to accept that miracle is to separate myself, 
not, I hope, from the spirit, but from the external form 
of the faith as laid down by the Church of England ; and 
it is the inability to confess this miracle which, beyond 
all else, forces me out of its communion. But, though 
I depart on this ground, the rejection of the miraculous 
leaves all the great spiritual truths I have been accus- 
tomed to teach untouched by any doubt of mine. They 
are now, in my belief, more clear than before, more use- 
ful for men's inspiration and comfort. They are freed, 
as it seems to me, from errors which may have once been 
their strength, but which are now their weakness. I re- 
joice that I can now leave on one side these supports of 
truth, and teach the truth itself alone. There will be, 
therefore, no more change in my preaching than that 
which will naturally follow on the greater sense of free- 
dom that it will possess. Nor do I leave the Church to 



LETTER TO THE CONGREGATION. 329 



become a mere Theist. I believe, though the Person of 
Christ is no longer miraculous to me, though I cannot 
consider him as absolute God, yet that God has specially 
revealed himself through Christ, that the highest relig- 
ion of mankind is founded on his life and revelation, that 
the spirit of his life is the life and salvation of men, and 
that he himself is the Head and Representative of Man- 
kind, — Jesus Christ our Lord. Since that is the case, 
and since I wish to sever myself as little as possible from 
a long and noble tradition of religion, and from the early 
associations of a great communion, the English Church 
Service, with some omissions, will be still read in Bed- 
ford Chapel. The chief of those omissions will naturally 
be the creeds. They exact agreement with their clauses 
from those who recite them. It is different with the 
prayers and Christian hymns contained in the service. 
They are subject to the selection of the worshippers; 
and no one while I read them will now impute to me 
doctrines which I do not hold, or mistake my position. 
I can use them as the best vehicles of religious emotion 
which we possess, without being supjDOsed to agree with 
all the theological views of their writers. It is not with- 
out a natural regret that I part from a communion in 
which I have served for more than twenty years, and 
from those old and dear associations which have been 
with me from my boyhood. And I must also feel some 
sadness for the loss of many who will leave my congre- 
gation and listen to me no more. But the time has come 
when, at any cost, I must say farewell, and look forward 
to a new and untried life, in which I pray I shall have 
the help and blessing of God. But, when I look forward, 
I cannot regret the parting. I am glad to be freed from 



330 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



compromise, glad to be able to speak unfettered by a 
system, glad to have a clear position, glad to jjass out of 
an atmosjmere which had become impossible to breathe, 
because I was supposed, however I might assert the 
contrary, to believe all the doctrines of the Church of 
England in the way the Church confessed them. 

Stopfokd A. Brooke. 

1 Manchester Square, London, Sept. 15, 1880. 



SALT "WITHOUT SAVOR. 



October 17, 1880, 

" Salt is good ; but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith will ye 
season it 1 " — Mark ix., 50. 

Since I last met you, I have taken a step which changes 
many things, both for you who have listened to me for 
so long and for myself. I have left the Church of Eng- 
land, and this chapel has entered upon a new life. It is 
with mingled seriousness and joy that I have departed. 
Indeed, there can be few hours more grave in a man's 
life than that in which, late in his career and no longer 
young, he leaves the home that has sheltered him for so 
many years, with all its associations and traditions, and 
sets sail an emigrant to a new land, to till it and to 
keep it. I have spoken in this personal way, because I 
wish my congregation to understand and feel as deeply 
as they can do for me how serious is the step that I have 
made, and how seriously I have taken it ; and I ask them 
to believe that I have not rashly done this thing, that I 
have counted the cost of it, and that I mean with God's 
help to work it out, and I have asked for his help in my 
future life, which is the power of the soul and the inspi- 
ration of labor. I have made these personal allusions, 
because I want you to feel and think as seriously of the 



332 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



duty I owe to those of you who may choose to remain 
with me or to come to me as I think of the step I have 
taken. I was bound not to make such a change, unless 
I clearlv knew in matters of religious thinking and of 
religious life where I was and what I meant, and unless 
I stated with all the clearness I could mu6ter why I 
have changed my place, and what I thought of those 
great religious truths to which I cling with all my heart 
and soul and intellect. It will be necessary, then, for 
some Sundays that I should speak on these truths, in 
order that you may know my views, and may either 
leave or stay with me. I am glad to be free from a j)osi- 
tion of compromise : I am now able to exj)ress my views 
with absolute freedom ; but, on this day when I begin 
my work, I am forced, somewhat against my will, to 
make a personal explanation, and to speak this morning 
of some reasons I have for leaving the Church, and this 
evening of the reasons I have for making those changes 
in the service which you have already observed in the 
paper which I sent to my congregation, and which many 
of those who belong to my congregation have seen else- 
where. I said that the main reason for my departure 
from the Church was that I had ceased to believe that 
miracles were credible ; and that, since the English 
Church founds its whole scheme of doctrine on the 
Miracle of the Incarnation, disbelief in that miracle put 
me outside of the doctrine of the Church. That was 
the crowning cause of my action ; and I shall explain it 
more fully when I come hereafter to speak of the incar- 
nation, and necessarily of the j>ersonality of Christ. It 
was enough to state that reason alone in a letter which 
was bound to be short, and in which I naturally chose to 



SALT WITHOUT SAVOB. 



333 



put forward the most prominent cause of action. More- 
over, to set aside the doctrine of the Miraculous Incar- 
nation, was to set myself apart, as I wished to do, from 
the whole scheme of doctrine put forthwith respect to 
God and man by the High and Low Church parties in 
the Church. The reason I gave then was quite full 
enough in itself to explain my secession; hut behind 
that there were other reasons which I am now bound to 
lay before you, and which will more fully explain what 
I have done and where I stand. I left the Church, not 
only from disagreement with its doctrines, but because I 
had come to disapprove of the very existence of it as an 
ecclesiastical body, especially of it as connected with the 
State, and also of its existence in relation to politics, 
theology, and religion. 

In all I am now going to say, I must not be understood 
to say one word against the men or those who belong to 
the Church, nor indeed against the noble working of the 
Church itself. I shall speak simply and clearly of the 
theory on Avhich the Church exists, and which I felt it 
impossible for me to live up to or to retain. Politically, 
the theory is mixed up with the old aristocratic system 
which has perished or is perishing so rapidly, the very 
essence of which is in opposition, as I think, to all the 
moving and living forms of society. The theory of the 
Church is an aristocratic theory, and it has ministered to 
that imperialistic conception of God which in theology 
has done as much harm as despotism or caste system 
of any kind has done to society. The way the Church 
works in society proves what I contend. It has system- 
atized exclusion and supported caste in religion. It has 
forced the whole body of the Dissenters from its forms 



334 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



to suffer under a religious and social stigma, which is 
scarcely now beginning to be removed. It claims to 
separate from itself and strives to keep down large 
masses of men whose spiritual life is as deep as its own ; 
nor does the Church recognize their religious move- 
ments as upon a level with its own movements. The 
standard of worthiness, then, in the theory of the 
Church, not of course in Churchmen, is not spiritual 
goodness, but union with itself. This is not the fault 
of its members, but the fault of its theory; but the fault 
condemns the theory. Many within the Church have 
tried hard to do what was right in the matter, to hold 
out the hand of union to our Nonconformists; but every 
effort has failed, and every effort will fail. The theory 
of the Church is too strong for these men. I could no 
longer be mixed up with a body whose very political 
principles I hold in condemnation, and the very exist- 
ence of which, in spite of all the liberal men in it, sup- 
ports the political principles and systems which I oppose 
and shall oppose as long as I have breath to speak. 

Secondly. Ecclesiastically, the Church supports and 
claims an outward authority for the faith of man. Its 
system is based on the authority of a creed which em- 
bodies and crystallizes past religious thought, and makes 
it still more rigid in articles; or upon the infallible au- 
thority of the Bible, or upon the infallible authority of 
the Divine Spirit secluded and confined within the limits 
of the Church itself. On whichever of these forms of 
authority Churchmen base themselves, the Church, by 
their voice, calls upon all men to unite themselves to 
her, to bend before these authorities or to lose or imperil 
their salvation. It asks them, practically speaking, to 



SALT WITHOUT SAVOK. 



335 



surrender a great part of their individuality, and to 
become one consenting part of the whole. The Bible 
has spoken, the Church has pronounced its decree, it is 
the part of the laity only to believe and to obey. The 
inevitable tendency of this system and its claims is to 
make both preacher and hearer the conventional ser- 
vants, not of a living word, but of a literal system, bones 
in a skeleton, not members of a living body, slaves either 
of a hierarchy or of a book; functionaries and listeners 
who do not know what belongs to them, who cannot 
move except in chains, and none the less chains for their 
j)onderous covering. Authority of this kind, faithfully 
followed and faithfully believed in, disarticulates, I do 
believe, in the end, the backbone of the intellect and of 
the spirit, and hangs lead upon the wings of the religious 
imagination, binds the soul away from spiritual freedom 
into the prison of the past, frequently reduces the con- 
science to silence, and still more frequently sacrifices the 
reason upon the altar of ecclesiastical theology. But 
these powers, which it is the inevitable tendency of 
authority to weaken and finally to paralyze, powers of 
the reason, conscience, and spirit, are the very and only 
powers which God has given to us, whereby we can see 
his truth and recognize his word and grasp to our hearts 
the new treasure of revelation, which it is his special 
work to declare as the world advances. Authority not 
only tends to enfeeble the power of the soul, but in en- 
feebling these powers destroys the very conditions in 
mankind by which the word of God is heard and under- 
stood. This is its inevitable tendency, and though there 
are numbers in the Church who claim their liberty from 
these authorities, and maintain their individual freedom, 



336 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



and hold their reason, conscience, and spirit largely free, 
the tendency in the end becomes too much for them, or 
their position becomes untenable. They cannot liberal- 
ize wholly a Church based uj:>on authority, and to take 
away these authorities from the Church, as many of 
them wish to do, will not liberalize it, but will do away 
with it altogether. It is nothing without its system, and 
its system is authoritative. How, then, when I came to 
feel thus strongly and to express it as I did a few months 
ago, could I remain bound up with a body which still 
rested upon authority ; how could I live any longer in 
the Church ? 

Again, on the question of the greatest of all religious 
conceptions, — the idea of a universal Church, — I felt that 
the theory of the Church was not only inadequate, but 
contradictory. The theory of the Church excludes from 
its fold all who do not agree with it, all who will not 
either confess its creeds or acknowledge the supremacy 
of the Bible as infallible, or bend to its spiritual decrees. 
And the Church is not alone in this. Almost all sects 
that differ from it have also their exclusive confessions, 
and many are more exclusive than the Church itself. 
Now, this exclusiveness and its fruits seemed to me to be 
at the root of nearly half the evils which had connected 
themselves with religion. In the past, it made intoler- 
ance and persecution a Christian duty : in the present, it 
is a source of daily violation of Christian love, both in 
jmblic and private. It guaranteed exclusiveness as a re- 
ligious necessity, promoted Pharisaism, and by calling 
those who did not agree with the Church or with a Con- 
fession infidels or heretics made them infidels and kept 
them heretics. This theory, too, denied, in my mind, 



SALT WITHOUT SAVOR. 



337 



the mighty conception which Christ gave to the world 
of a universal fatherhood in God, and of a universal 
brotherhood among men, of God incarnate in all men, of 
the eternal and necessary bond that binds God to every 
single soul ; of a universal Church which embraces all the 
race which now exists, in ideal, but which will be com- 
pleted in fact in the future. These vast and glorious 
ideas, which, taken together, form the most magnificent 
conception of Christendom, are suppressed and stifled by 
the theory of the Church, and by the exclusiveness of 
sects which bind up themselves within the limits of con- 
fessions. Churches and sects talk of the Church of God 
and of the world, as if they were two distinct things, not 
only in fact, but absolutely in idea, — as if there were a 
final and necessary separation between the two. The 
true view is, I believe, that the world and all mankind is 
the Church of God, and all men in idea are redeemed, 
but not as yet saved ; that the idea will be realized in 
full at last, and humanity, one and all, made the absolute 
Son of God. This idea is lost, nay, is contradicted by 
the theory of the Church, not, indeed, by all who belong 
to the Church, but by the very theory on which it exists. 
But it is the idea which of all is the most deeply rooted 
and most ardent and most enkindling in my faith. 
Therefore, when I came to see that it was not compati- 
ble with the Church, or with joining any sect which de- 
manded assent to creeds or confessions as necessary to 
salvation, I could neither stay in the Church nor join a 
sect. 

Lastly, I found no rest finally for my foot among any 
of the parties in the Church, and, least of all, among the 
liberal Church party. Two clear schemes of doctrine 



338 



FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 



existed in the Church some years ago, and were broadly 
characterized as High Church and Low Church. Both 
of these schemes have lived for centuries, and they are 
logical within themselves, and being, indeed, the outcome 
of two parts of human nature, had and still possess tre- 
mendous power over the minds of men. Both are op- 
posed to each other, radically opposed ; and many years 
ago, when a new religious fervor began to stir in the 
Church, these two schemes of doctrine, being excited 
through that fervor, began to clash, and finally clashed in 
a great trial, so that a split seemed inevitable, and one 
or other of the parties seemed impelled to leave the 
Church. It was then that the law, to whose sentence 
the matter was referred, affirmed that both these jiarties, 
so opposite, could justly and conscientiously exist within 
the Church. And, when that was so found, then the old 
notion of a comprehensive Church, which might repre- 
sent all phases of belief in the nation, began to take a 
new consistency in men; and this notion of making the 
Church comprehensive soon extended itself. To many 
persons, among whom I found myself, both these theo- 
logical schools of which I speak were abhorrent, and 
these persons, of whom, as I said, I became one, caught 
at the idea of widening the Church, and, when the com- 
promise afforded in the case of the Gorhani Judgment 
gave them hope, formed a fresh party in the Church, and 
strove to naturalize within its limits a liberal theology. 
"The Church was a Church of compromise," they said; 
" and everything the law allowed them to say they would 
say." In that way, by introducing liberal news into the 
Church, they tried to make these views slowly at home 
within its fold. The Church, they believed, finding 



SALT WITHOUT SAVOR. 



339 



these views at home within it, would naturally expand, 
open its arms wider, and lessen the severity of its tenets. 
And, indeed, that has been done. It was a tenable posi- 
tion, upon the ground that the law, which only takes 
notice of the agreement of words, was the Judge of the- 
ology ; and it was further tenable so long as the public 
understood and recognized that position. But when the 
theory of that party should come to be pushed too far, 
and come into contact with vital and pressing questions, 
it was certain to break down. There comes a time when 
compromise is incomprehensible, and that time has come 
now. Courpromise has done its work, it has expanded 
the Church, it has modified its tests. It has made the 
whole tone of the Church more tolerant, while the power 
of the Church as a religious body has increased, and 
justly and nobly increased, owing to the theory of the 
liberal party within the Church. But you cannot strain 
even an elastic body beyond a certain point ; and if it 
should come to be said — and there are some symptoms 
of such a thing — that the liberal clergy in the Church 
may say anything, may deny the miracles and the divin- 
ity, not to say the Godhead of Christ, may abandon the 
Incarnation and the Resurrection as miracles and utterly 
deny the authority of the Church and of the Bible and 
yet cling to the Church, then they will find that the 
strain will be too great for themselves, for their congre- 
gations, for the endurance of the Church and for the 
sympathy and belief of the laity. 

It will be better then for the great cause of religious 
life in the nation that these persons who may come to 
push compromise so far should understand and frankly 
accept the fact that compromise has already reached its 



340 



FAITH AND FBEEDOM. 



limits, and either revert to the position occupied a few 
years ago (and which is now occupied by the greater 
number of them with a clear conscience) or choose a 
position outside the Church. That was my personal 
opinion ; and I only express it now in self-defence, and 
not in attacking others. I was convinced that the whole 
of religion was suffering from- the state of compromise, — 
not the religion of persons who are already religious, but 
the chances of religion in the great masses of men who 
had been affected by unbelief in God or unbelief in 
Christianity. The High Church and the Low Church do 
not compromise at all : they deliberately oppose those 
who deny miracles, and those who support the doctrine 
of the Broad Church. Every one understands their posi- 
tion. But the liberal party in the Church, not opposing 
those who deny the miracles or attack doctrines, com- 
promise the matter by putting aside the question, speak- 
ing of Christianity as a beautiful moral system which is 
not really founded upon miracles or upon dogmas, but 
lives in the life of the heart. But the question cannot be 
put aside, and the method of the liberal party in the 
Church cannot be pushed further with advantage to the 
religious life of the nation. To say nothing about miracles 
when the question is leaping into the mind of every one, 
to say simply that Christianity does not rest upon them, is 
to act as men say the ostrich acts. There is the question 
vivid, full-grown, shouting like Achilles in the trench; 
and the Trojans smiling within the walls, and saying that 
it is not a question at all. 

And the other questions, too, which press for solution, 
owing to the vast changes which science has wrought in 
the views of history and the physical world, are too vital, 



SALT WITHOUT SAVOR. 341 

too close to the homes and hearts and brains of men for 
a farther compromise : they involve the very heart of 
religion ; and men who love religion and believe in Chris- 
tianity as the saving power of the race, and yet who do 
not see how they can without self-inflicted blindness deny 
that the results of science and criticism have changed the 
whole aspect of religious questions, have no business to 
ignore by silence or to pass by only with allusions these 
questions, in order that they may by their inaction widen 
the Church. They will not widen it, and the very life 
of religion is in danger among the masses of the people. 
It is no time to think only of a side issue, and to try it. 
It was because I was convinced of the harm being done 
by this mode of action to religious life among the people 
that I resolved to give up that action for another, and 
can only try it outside the Church ; for the moment I 
proclaimed my unbelief in miracles — for example, in the 
Miracle of the Incarnation — I could not remain in the 
Church, even were I allowed to remain, and hope to do 
any good. Every one would accuse me of dishonesty. 
Now it is different. Now I know that I shall be able to 
declare that, while I frankly accept the proved conclu- 
sions of science and criticism, there remain yet to me un- 
touched and clear the great spiritual truths of the soul, 
the eternal revelation of God, the dee}) life of Chris- 
tianity. I am free, and I am heartily glad of it. I make 
no sacrifice. I have followed with joy and gladness my 
own convictions, and look forward with ardor and with 
emotion to preaching the great truths that declare the 
divine relations of God and man. I shall speak of God 
abiding in nature and abiding in man, of God immanent 
in history and filling and impelling, day by day, the race 



342 



FAITH AND FREEDOM. 



of man to a glorious and a righteous end : of the revela- 
tion he is daily giving of himself to man and of the in- 
spiration which he pours into us all ; of God as revealed 
in the highest way through Jesus Christ, my master; of 
the life which Christ has disclosed in his own life, as the 
true life of mankind ; of the power and love by which 
God through him kindles and supports that love ; of man 
reconciled to God through Christ, and reconciled to his 
brother man ; of God incarnate in all men in the same 
manner, though not in the same degree as he was incar- 
nate in Christ ; of the vast spiritual communion in which 
all men are contained, and the depth of the immortality 
in which they now live and the fulfilment of which is 
their destiny ; of the personal life of God in the soul 
and of his universal life in the race, and of a thousand 
results which in human history and human life flow in 
practice from the vivid existence of these mighty truths 
in man. Can I, then, be sorrowful as I look forward, or 
look back with any dim regret? Perfect freedom in 
these truths ought to kindle and to inspire. Oh ! pray 
that I may always keep their ardor within me, and that 
in humility I may strive to be worthy of them and teach 
them, that the Father of light and of life may be with 
me, and that humbly and faithfully I may serve God, my 
Father, walking in the footstejjs of my master, Jesus 
Christ. 



THE DUTIES OF WOMEN, 



A COURSE OF LECTURES 



By FRANCES POWER COBBE. 



CRITICAL NOTICES. 
An eminent American clergyman, "writing from London, says : — 
" It is the profoirndest, wisest, purest, noblest book, in principle, aim. and tone, 
vet written upon the True Position of "Woman in Society. It should be circu- 
lated far and wide among all classes of our countrywomen. It should be made 
a class-book in our schools. It should become the 1 Hand-Book ' and Vade Mecum 
of young American girls." 

" As I turn the pages of tbis book, I am struck with its candor, sympathy, and 
insisht. and wish tbat it might be read and pondered by both conservative and 
radical women. The former might learn the relation of freedom to duty, and the 
latter mav well consider the perils which surround each onward step". . . . Miss 
Cobbe might have called her book 'Old Duties in >>ew Lights.' It must help 
manv women to lead sincere, self-reliant lives, and to determine at critical 
moments what their action shall be."— Mrs. Elizabeth K. Churchill, in the Provi- 
dence Joui-nal. 

" The best of all books on ' Women's Duties.' Xow that George Zliot is gone, 
there is probably no woman in England so well equipped for general literarv 
work as Miss Cobbe." — Col. T. Wentworth Higginson, in Woman's Journal. 

"I desire to commend it to the careful perusal of women in our own countrv, 
as a book full of timely counsel and suggestion, and to all. as a valuable contri- 
bution to the literature of ethics."— Julia Ward Howe, in Christian Register. 

" Just now, the first ' Duty of Women ' is to read this whole book with studious 
self-appUcation: for it is rich in saving common sense, warm with the love of 
man, and consecrated by the love of God."— Miss Harriet Ware Hall, in Unitarian 
Review. 

" What is best in the whole book is that she founds her teaching for women so 
stronglv in the deepest and simplest moral principles that her thoughts come 
with a force, and breadth which win for them at once a respectable hearing."— 
London Spectator. 

" One of the notable books of the season. . . . No true woman can read these 
lectures without being stirred by them to completer life."— Morning Star. 

" In Miss Cobbe's latest book, ' The Duties of Women.' there is much to be com- 
mended for its common sense and its helpfulness. Miss Cobbe goes down to the 
principles underlying the topics of which she_§peaks: and the strength with 
which she utters her thoughts is the strength of conviction and of earnest pur- 
pose." — Sunday School Times. 

"No book has come from England this year, which was better worthy of 
reproduction than this one."— Saturday Evening Gazette. 

"The six lectures maybe said to be the very acme, in facile strength and 
clearness and power of reasoning, of a long life of most efficient and noble labor 
in the cause of the elevation of woman and her possession of the rights that are 
and should be hers. We wish they might be read bv everv man and woman in 
this country, with an understanding and receptive mind, free from old notions 
and prejudices."— Home Journal. 

Author's American Edition. Cloth. 12mo. Price SI. 00. 



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AUTHORSHIP OF THE FOURTH OOSPEL; 



EXTERNAL EVIDENCES, 



By EZRA ABBOT, D.D., LLD., 

Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity 
School of Harvard University. 

This essay, originally read before the Ministers' Institute, at Provi- 
dence, R.I., in 1879, and since then revised and greatly expanded, 
comes most appositely at a time when a destructive school of criticism 
is subjecting the origin and authenticity of the various books of the 
Bible to the most searching investigation. Professor Abbot is emi- 
nently qualified for the discussion which he has undertaken. A valued 
member of the Anglo-American Bible Revision Committee, he is 
acknowledged to be one of the foremost scbolars of Christendom in 
his department. This essay is right in the line of his life studies, 
and bears everywhere unmistakable marks of conscientious labor. 
Religious papers of all denominations unite in bearing testimony to its 
value ; and it has been fairly pronounced by a writer in the Popular 
Science Monthly for August " a masterpiece of critical scholarship." 

" Professor Abbot is familiar with the almost immense literature of his subject 
as no other American is, and probably he has not over four or five peers abroad. 
He professes to belong to the liberal school of theology, whence his conclusion 
derives a twofold interest. It is, thus far, the principal contribution of the year 
to American theology, and cannot easily be overrated. Those who wish to boast 
of American theology, without making themselves ridiculous, will do well to 
appeal to Abbot on St. John."— Boston Advertiser. 

" There is no higher authority on this subject in America than Professor 
Abbot. There is no more competent scholar in Germany. . . . The book may be 
said to be the most important contribution to this department of Biblical 
apologetics that has been made in America since Norton's work."— N. V. Inde- 
pendent. 

" It is not too much to say that Professor Abbot has laid all Christian scholars 
under a deep debt of obligation by the thoroughness of Jiis researches into a 
question of primary interest and importance. As the result, he may be con- 
sidered to have completely turned the tables upon the opponents of the Apostolic 
authorship. To Bishop Lightfoot and Professor Drummond, much praise is due 
for their investigations in this field ; but to Professor Abbot clearly belongs the 
palm. No one before hinvhad so completely mastered the literature of the early 
Christian period. His reading seems to have embraced every tiling, and his 
memory to retain everything on the subject."— Christian Life (English). 

" The present volume is the fruit of the author's well-known ripe scholarship, 
keen insight, and accuracy almost proverbial, and cannot fail to take rank with 
the foremost publications on the general subject, both here and on the other 
side of the Atlantic. It is made available to more of the clerical profession than 
such books usually are, by introducing patristic and other quotations in English, 
where practicable, in a simple and literal translation. Scarcely anywhere will 
the reader find such a well-digested stock of information, and such forcible, not 
to say irrefragable, argument to prove the genuineness of John's Gospel. '— 
Sunday School Times. 

" Professor Abbot's discussion is simply admirable, both for its research and 
its reasoning. It condenses into itself years of study. Nothing seems to have 
escaped the author, and his presentation of the argument is unsurpassed in its 
judicial fairness and its good sense. In short, the discussion is the ablest vindi- 
cation of historic truth respecting the Fourth Gospel which has appeared for 
many a day,— a discussion which will compel the attention, and, as we believe, 
the assent of the foremost European scholars. It is one of the most thorough 
critical essays ever produced in this country." 

8vo. 104 pp. Price, Cloth, 15 Cents. Paper, 50 Cents. 



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MINOT J. SAVAGE'S BOOKS, 



" Since Theodore Parler died, there has been no clergyman more worthy or more 
capable of wearing his mantle than Mr. Savage." — Boston Sttnday Hekald. 

(Just Ready.) 
BELIEF IN GOD. 

I. Introduction. H. Origin and Development of the Idea of God. 
III. Does God Exist ? IV. Can we Know God ? V. Is God Con- 
scions, Personal, and Good? VI. VvTiv does not God Reveal Him- 
self ? YII. Shall we Worship God ? VIII. Shall we Pray to God? 
IX. The Glory and the Shame of Atheism. X. The Intellectual 
Basis of Faith (by VTm. H. Savage). 

In this latest work by Mr. Savage, considered by many his best, he meets -with 
characteristic fearlessness some of the fundamental problems of Theism which 
must some day present themselves to every thoughtful miud. and discusses them 
in a spirit of reverent rationalism. Even those who cannot agree with Mr. Sav- 
age in all points will find much to commend in this volume. 

Cloth. 12mo. 176 pp. Price Sl.OO. 

THE MORALS OF EVOLUTION. 

I. Is Life worth Living ? II. Morality and Religion in the Past. 
HE. The Origin of Goodness. IV. The Nature of Goodness. V. The 
Sense of Obligation. VI. Selfishness and Sacrifice. VII. The Rela- 
tivity of Duty. VIII. Real and Conventional Virtues and Vices. 
IX. Morals and Knowledge. X. Rights and Duties in Matters of 
Opinion. XI. Moral Sanctions. XII. Morality and Religion in the 
Future. 

" "We should very much like to meet with the pulpit orator who would treat us 
to a dozen extempore sermons as healthy in tone and as devoid of archaisms as 
are the contents of this little book. There is not a trace of anv antagonism to 
venerable creeds. On the contrary, the author's acceptance of Christian theism 
is firm and clear ; but there is so complete an absence of the traditional 
phraseology of the pulpit, and such an inartificial representation of the est 
spirit of the age. that the reader totally forgets he has before him the steno- 
graphic report of a series of seventh-day homilies."— Westminster Review. 

Cloth. 13mo. 191 pp. Price 81.00. 

TALKS ABOUT JESUS. 

I. Introduction. II. Sources of our Knowledge. III. The Mi- 
raculous. IV. Birth and Childhood. V. Public Life. VI. Death 
and Resurrection. VII. The Messianic Idea. VIII. Jesus and the 
Church; or, VTas Jesus a Christian ? IX. Jesus and Humanity; or, 
Christianity among the Religions. 

" This book is well adapted to the needs of the questioner, cominsc as it does 
from one who ' has fought over the whole ground of modern scepticism in a 
hand-to-hand contest with its shadows and facts.' "—Unity. 

Cloth. 13mo. 161 pp. Price Sl.OO. 

CHRISTIANITY the SCIENCE of MANHOOD, 

A BOOK FOR QUESTIONERS. 

" It is a thoroughly good book to place in the hands of a voung man ; and it is 
written in a style so sprightly and popular that he will find "his attention held to 
it, while his mind is persuaded by its convincing reasonings."— Z ion's Herald. 

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INSTITUTE ESSAYS; 

READ BEFORE THE " MINISTERS 5 INSTITUTE," PROVI- 
DENCE, R.I., OCTOBER, 1879. 

CONTENTS : 

Introduction Rev. H. "W. Bellows. 

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Rev. S. R. Calthrop. 

The Relation of Modern Philosophy to Lib- 
eralise Prof. C. C. Everett. 

Influence of Philosophy upon Christianity, F. E. Abbot. 

Monotheism and the Jews, Dr. Gustav Gottheil. 

The Idea of God, Rev. J. TV. Chad-wick. 

The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, . . . Prof .Ezra Abbot. 

The Gospel of John, Rev. Francis Tiffany. 

Methods of Dealing with Social Questions, Rev. J. B. Harrison. 
Ethical Law and Social Order, Rev. Geo. Batchelor. 

" To the reader of comparative theologies, this book has a special interest."— 

Zion's Herald. 

" The publication of this volume is one of the great tide-marks of theological 
progress in the United States."— Free Religious Index. 

"Of all the compilations to which Unitarian discussions have given rise, this 
will be found the most solid and meaty."— Christian Register. 

" The cause of Unitarianism will have to take care of itself ; but it is a matter 
of great public importance when clergymen, however stationed in practical life, 
address themselves without reserve aiid without qualification to the ascertain 
ment of philosophic truth. How well this has been done at the Providence 
meeting of the ' Institute' is shown by this volume, which is entitled to the cor- 
dial attention not only of students of theology, but also of those interested in 
high truth. Those who know enough, and those whose religious system has been 
completed, had better not approach a volume which, to a seeker after facts, is 
wonderfully grateful and stimulating."— Boston Advertiser. 

8vo, 2S0 pp. Cloth, 81.25; paper, 81.00. 



THREE PHASES OF MODERN THEOLOGY; 

CALVINISM, UNITARIANISM, LIBERALISM. 

By JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN - , A.M., 
LECTURER ON ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 

" The addresses rest throughout on Christian theism, the ethical spirit, the 
temperate soul, vast reading, and good judgment. They are singularly dispas 
sionate and well balanced, and good readers will find th'eni healthful as well as 
stimulating and helpful."— Boston Advertiser. 

8vo, 68 pp. Paper. Price 35 cents. 



THE MINISTER'S HAND-BOOK, 

FOR CHRISTENINGS, WEDDINGS, AND FUNERALS. 

COMPILED AND ARRANGED 
By Rev. M1NOTJ. SAVAGE. 

This little volume contains a service for the baptism of children, several forms 
of marriage service, and a variety of burial services, with a number of selections 
in prose and poetry suitable for'use at funerals. At the end of the book are a 
dozen blank pages, for such additions as individual taste may indicate. It is well 
printed in clear, large type, and put up in neat, flexible binding, its size and shape 
being arranged especially for the pocket. 

Flexible clotli, 75 cents; full Turkey morocco, $81.75. 



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LIBRARY 




